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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


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MY FAITH 
IN IMMORTALITY 


By ff 
WILLIAM E.’ BARTON 


AUTHOR OF 
The Life of Abraham Lincoln 


INDIANAPOLIS 
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 





CorprricHt, 1926 
By tHE Bosss-Mrrgirt Company 


Printed in the United States of America 


PRINTED AND BOUND 
BY BRAUNWORTH & CO., ING. 
BROOKLYN, NEW YORK 


PREFACE 


The only reason which need be given for the writing of 
this book is the clear conviction of the author, out of a 
long experience, that one of the profound needs of the 
present time is a faith in immortality, reasonable, intel- 
ligible and free from superstition. Such a faith this book 
endeavors to assist. 

This volume was written for the comfort of others, 
and not to express any personal sorrow on the part of 
the author. From such sorrow his own life had been rela- 
tively free. A thousand times he had stood beside the 
grave. For forty years he had preached to others a gos- 
pel of comfort, and during that whole time death had not 
entered his own door. On the morning of November 7, 
1925, when the final touches were put on the manuscript, 
and the wrapped package lay upon the desk awaiting the 
expressman to convey it to the publisher, no shadow was 
seen to impend above his own home. Before the day 
ended, the wife of his youth, well beloved for forty happy 
years, lay dead. While no page of this book was writ- 
ten as an expression of the author’s own grief, the proof- 
sheets have been read in the shadow of a great personal 
bereavement. The faith which he has preached to others, 
the faith which she cherished, is the author’s own comfort. 
If the pure in heart see God, hers is a radiant vision. 


Wie 


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CONE NTS 
CHAPTER PAGE 
LG VV OND Sie Mine Utne CUCU Lhe nemo MAE eA eC gf 
II Tue Founpation or Knownience . . 28 
PEE CRG DT ANDY ATT FEM Miny Loh ne aCe Te Sam dir ue eine 
TV Darn eer OM RPE yds a eed Celut s fh aes a 
VORA HICH TROMGCrOD Ueto eruhial fe aia iinih lek creat od UE GS 
MAIO Dre Dist or THe LAR TI is)\ eo taheeuine sume Oe 
Ne HE POW RE HOR) LITE D ite wo Sh tle ae, ta eh aaa 
MELE SCIENCE) AND: -_MMORTALIDYS Ve 8 OY ee 
Ae PAY LOSOPHY (AND ME ATT ED iithan cu uaa el LOO 
X <IwMmorrarity In tHe Otp Testament. 171 
XI Immorrauiry In tHE New Testramentr. 183 
XIT Can Wet Communicate with tue Dreap? . 194 
Ad RUNTOVTH DO UINE THER MOST) (00 fr Nos. eis | ae 
XIV May We Pray vor Our Deap? . . . 252 


XV HEAVEN } DMRS otal AC NRE? iittele Orem Thi Sep 


; Ly a 
ie sakes 
BA\e * re y) 


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MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 





MY FAITH 
IN IMMORTALITY 


CHAPTER I 
I WONDER 


i rinp myself living in a highly improbable 
world. I was not consulted in advance about the 
matter of my coming here to live. If I had been, 
I think I should have come. I am certainly glad 
Iam here. I am glad of every year I have lived, 
and glad that I still am living. I am in no haste to 
leave; if I could continue to live for another hun- 
dred years as happily as I have lived for something 
less than my first hundred, I should be willing to 
sign on the dotted line an agreement to accept the 
added century and more of life in this world, and 
J should be happy in the prospect. On the other 
hand, I am not mourning on account of the im=- 

11 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


probability of such an opportunity. I am here, 
and glad I came, and content to stay as long as I 
can be happy and useful, and then move on. 

It is not the kind of world I should have made 
or expected. I have never admitted that I could 
have made a better one, but it has sometimes seemed 
to me that, although professional optimists, of 
whom I am almost one, may declare that this is the 
best of all possible worlds, it might have been pos- 
sible to “mold it nearer to the heart’s desire.” It 
certainly is not a perfect world. Some of us have 
spent a good many years serving as members of 
charitable, educational and philanthropic commit- 
tees trying to make it better, and I expect to keep 
on doing so. Meantime, I do not complain, but I 
wonder. 

When I speak of this world, I do not mean this 
ponderable globe, but that part of it which enters 
into my experience and vision, plus whatever I am 
able to know and see in the limited part of the vis- 
ible universe that I happen to notice and think 
about. ‘This world, so limited and defined, is 
filled with material for wonder. If I were map- 
ping the constellations, I should not be content to 

12 


I WONDER 


imagine that one group of stars outlined a bear 
and another a scorpion and another a pair of 
twins; I should look around until I found a few 
stars that might make for me an interrogation 
point. 

Tt is not alone the stars that cause me to wonder. 
I find equal cause for wonder in much smaller and 
nearer objects. I can say with Tennyson, that if I 
understood all the answers to all the questions and 
wonderments that are conjured up by the “flower 
in the crannied wall,’ I should know the whole 
story of the universe. Tennyson did not know; he 
wondered. I do not know; I wonder. 

I must not cheapen this word “wonder.” It 
must not be used for mere conjecture or super- 
ficial uncertainty. I must not say, “I wonder 
when George will come,” or, “It is a wonder the 
baby did not break his arm when he fell down- 
stairs.” George will come when he comes; I should 
like to know when, but that is not a matter for won- 
der. I am glad the baby was hurt no worse, but, 
given the baby’s height and weight and the density 
of his tissues and the flexibility of his cartilaginous 
bones and the thickness of the stair carpet, it was 

13 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


not possible for the baby to be either more or less 
hurt than he was. We must save the word “won- 
der” for things that are really wonderful. Tor 
these lesser matters a cheaper word will suffice. 

I wonder what is the nature of matter. ‘This 
table is made of oak, and this book of paper, with a 
eover of cloth; the electric light is a matter of glass 
globe and copper wire; but what is the basic reality 
that inheres in wood and paper and cloth and glass 
and copper and mountains and mole-hills and con- 
stellations and nebulez and other things? What is 
the common element inherent in and _ inclusive 
of all these and other materials? I have read 
various learned treatises in reply to this in- 
quiry. I am not unfamiliar with certain theories 
of realism and idealism behind which the philos- 
ophers and scientists have concealed a pitiful scrap 
of their ignorance. I am not asking for the fig 
leaf of their nomenclature, nor the assumption that 
when a Greek word is made into a scientific name 
the question is answered. I also know Greek, or 
once did, and can make names to hide my own igno- 
rance; but I am here and now confessing it, and 
with it 1 am confessing the ignorance of all the 

14 


t WONDER 


others. All of us together do not know a millionth 
part of one per cent of what there is that might be 
known. We do not “guess at half and multiply by 
two.” We guess at a millionth and there are not 
figures enough for a denominator of our ignorance. 
What is matter? Or, to use a plural noun with a 
singular verb as the Greeks sometimes did, what is 
things ?* 

Our definition of particular things is a summary 
of certain perceived qualities: “The rose is red; the 
violet is blue; sugar is sweet,” and so on. 

But the quality of redness is not in the rose. The 
petals of the rose are so constituted as to reflect to 
the eye certain red rays of light. These rays are 
absorbed and not reflected by the leaves, which are 
therefore called by another color. But when we 
say that the leaves of the rose-bush are green and 
the petals red, or that the grass is green, and that 
the sky is blue, we know better than to suppose that 
we are speaking of qualities eternally inherent in 
the leaf and petal, grass and sky. I have seen 


“There is a little book of popular essays for young people, 
issued in England in 1911, the author apparently a physician, 
entitled J Wonder. It was published by Macmillan, and if still in 
print may be read with profit. I can not think it had a large 
sale, as I have seen only one copy, which I have. 


15 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


grass that was not green, and yet was undeniably 
grass; and I have seen the sky when it was not blue. 
The color of the sky and the color of the grass are 
in the eye that receives reflected rays of light of 
those particular colors. I do not know what the 
real color of the grass or sky is. I wonder. 

Yet, if that were the whole of the problem, I 
could afford to let it go, and for practical purposes, 
I do not consider it. The green of the grass, and 
the blue of the sky are “good enough for me.” But 
when I am seeking to know what things is (not 
what particular thing as distinct from other things, 
are but what all things is) I must not let myself be 
deceived by appearances which I know are decep- 
tive. I wonder what is the nature of matter. 

I learned years ago that matter is composed of 
molecules, and that molecules are made up of ho- 
mogeneous and indivisible units, far too small for 
the microscope to disclose, and called by a Greek 
name “atoms” which simply means “can-not-be- 
cut.” But now I am told that each atom is a solar 
system with a central positive electron and a num- 
ber of negative electrons moving about it. I am 
willing to believe it, though it requires great faith. 

16 


I WONDER 


But I do not know yet what matter is or what 
things is. I wonder. 

I live in a world of movement and energy, which 
seems to move more or less by method. If I eat a 
peach and toss the stone out of my window, I do so 
in expectation that outside the window, where the 
force of my arm conveys it, the stone will be taken 
in charge by another form of energy, which doubt- 
less is operative inside the window as well as out, 
and that the stone will not keep on going in the di- 
rection in which I toss it, and will not fall up, but 
will fall down to the ground and disappear harm- 
lessly among the pine needles. By way of express- 
ing my expectation that it will fall down and not 
up I say that the law of gravitation pulls it down. 
This is as good a way of disposing of the subject as 
any, and it disposes of the troublesome question 
very much as I dispose of the peach-stone, by giv- 
ing it a name and tossing it out of the window. 
But if I cared to plant the peach-stone I might ob- 
serve other forces than gravitation at work. What 
is force? Yes, I wonder what kind of force that is 
which we call life. 

The wonder of life! I have seen it come and 

17 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


go—the flower bursting from the bud; the seed 
pushing through the turf and strugghng to the 
light; the bird picking its shell, and I wonder. 
Who told the seed that if it pushed through the 
soil it would find light? Who told the bird that 
picking was the way to get out? Who told the bird 
that there was any way out? I wonder, I wonder! 

I wonder what that force is which is not convert- 
ible into any other force, yet which is one of the 
mightiest of all the forms of energy—the force of 
life. I am not entering into any biological discus- 
sion as to vitalism and the various forms of nega- 
tion or qualification which some of them employ. 
I wonder what life is. I wonder what mind is! 

I pause for a moment to listen to the comment of 
Mr. Gadgrind; “What’s the use of wondering? 
All I wonder is where my next meal is coming 
from. All this talk about wonder seems to me un- 
profitable.” 

Go, Mr. Gadgrind, and get your next meal. But 
stay, even you must wait a little longer. This thing 
we call wonder is not so unprofitable as you sup- 
pose. If wonder is waste energy, why wonder 
about the meal? And if you are to wonder, why 

18 


I WONDER 


not wonder about something greater? That clever, 
if sometimes wearisome essayist, Chesterton, was 
never more true than when he said, “The world will 
never starve for want of wonders, but only for 
want of wonder.” When Emerson said that “won- 
der is the seed of science,” he was hardly more than 
paraphrasing Socrates, whom Plato quotes as hav- 
ing said that “wonder is the sole beginning of 
philosophy.” 

Wonder is one of the most precious things in the 
world. It is the foundation of knowledge and the 
soul of all that can be called success. Eiven if you 
only wonder where you can sell another bushel of 
potatoes, you are turning a cheap form of wonder 
to profit. There are many men like the lout of 
whom Dryden wrote: 


Long stood the noble youth oppressed with awe, 
And stupid at the wondrous things he saw. 


We shall not be quite so stupid if we have mind 
enough to wonder. Among those extra-canonical 
“sayings” of Jesus which have some degree of right 
to be considered genuine utterances of the Lord, 
is one that reads, “He that wonders shall reign; 
and he that reigns shall rest.” 


19 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


How long am I to wonder in this fashion? I 
could go on forever, wondering, wondering; but I 
should like to wonder as profitably as possible. 
The world in which I live has been created with 
great ingenuity, apparently to make me wonder. 

No one of the fundamental mysteries has ever 
been removed. ‘The mystery of matter, the mys- 
tery of time and space, the mystery of life, the 
mystery of mind, the mysteries of pain and death, 
all are with us as they have been always. Nor is 
there any relief in turning from the mysteries of 
vast proportions or immeasurable distances to 
those that are smaller in bulk or closer at hand. A 
recent minor poet has thus written of the cloud in 
the sky and the flower in her hand: 

I see the giant stalking in the sky, 

The giant cloud above the wilderness, 

Bearing a mystery too far, too high 

For my poor guess. 

Away I turned me, saying, “I must seek 

In lowlier places for the wonder-word. 

Something more little, intimate, shall speak.” 

A bright rose stirred. 

And long I looked into its face to see 

At last some hidden import of the hour. 

And I had thought to turn from mystery, 


But O, flower! flower! —Acnus LEE. 
20 


I WONDER 


There is no escape from mystery. But if we can 
not push it far from us, we may at least hope not to_ 
be crushed under its weight, or lie down in supine 
and hopeless refusal to think. If we do not accept 
the challenge which life’s mysteries present to us, 
then, in the midst of life, we are in death. 

I do not eovet that frame of mind which permits 
a man to go through life seeing wonders and never 
wondering. I have no sympathy with the man who 
would yawn at witnessing the creation of the world 
if he were to see it a second time. ‘The normal man 
will say with Wordsworth: 


My heart leaps up when I behold 
A rainbow in the sky. 

So was it when my life began; 

So is it now I am a man; 

So be it when I shall grow old, 
Or let me die. 

The man without this sense of wonder need not 
pray to die, he is already dead. Within him some- 
thing very precious has died for which nothing can 
compensate. I behold a rainbow or a dew-drop 
and I wonder. 

I wonder at the infinitely great in nature, and 
the infinitely small, Everything is wonderful. 


21 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


But let me instance just one more object of 
wonder. 

I might wonder at the mystery of pain; I might 
wonder at the presence of evil in a world made by a 
good God. I do wonder about these things, but 
now especially I am wondering about death. 

Long ago I stopped wondering about death as a 
fact in human experience. 

I shall not argue about it now. Itishere. It is 
a fact which sooner or later we shall all face. A 
man must either suffer many sorrows and then die, 
or die young. What is death, and why is it? 

I wonder if there is life after death. I know that 
millions of men and women have asked the same 
question, some of them with less experience than I. 
For while I have never been dead, I have seen 
much of death. I have stood beside a thousand 
graves and tried to speak words of comfort to a 
thousand different groups of weeping friends. 
They have wondered, and have asked me again and 
again what I believe about life after death. 

I have a faith that to me is unspeakably pre- 
cious; it is of this faith I write. 

“Tf a man die, shall he live again?” 

I wonder; I also believe. 


aa 


CHAPTER II 
THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE 


Ir 1s affirmed by one of our poets that ignorance 
is sometimes bliss; if that be true, this should be a 
blissful world, for we are very ignorant. When 
we say we know a thing, we usually mean that we 
believe, hope, or imagine it is true. We have to 
assume something in order to have ground on 
which to stand while we begin to explore and inves- 
tigate. But let us begin as nearly as possible at 
rock bottom. Apart from the things that we be- 
lieve, hope, or imagine to be true, what do we 
know? 

We do not know that there will be a to-morrow 
nor can we prove that there was a yesterday. It 
would trouble us to demonstrate that there is a 
to-day. For all that we can prove, the world was 
created this morning, or is not yet created. 

Very well, then, let us begin by denying every- 

23 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


thing. Let us not admit that anything exists. We 
will not admit that there is a world or a Bible or a 
God or any matter or force or mind. 

But stop; there evidently is mind. I can not 
deny everything without thinking, and where there 
is thought there must be a thinker. I am thinking, 
perhaps foolishly, but still thinking. When I say 
“JT deny that I am here,” I know that I affirm that 
I am here denying it. A famous philosopher 
named Descartes once began in that way, denying 
everything, that he might clear the ground and 
start at the bottom. He put his first affirmation in 
a brief Latin sentence, Cogito, ergo sum. “I think, 
therefore I am.” 

I am! What an affirmation! God said to 
Moses, “Go say to Pharaoh, I am hath sent me.” 
And here I am, saying the same thing of myself, 
“T am.” Let me make much of this brief moment 
of isolated glory, for it will not last long. For this 
quarter second of speculative thinking there is 
nothing else in the universe than a thinking, doubt- 
ing, denying I. “I deny that I am, therefore I 
am.” lone on this dizzy pedestal of denial I 
stand, kicking it down in the very act that raises me 

24 


THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE 


to the top of it, and having to admit that my very 
denial is a declaration that my denial is untrue. 

I can not deny everything without laughing my- 
self out of court. “I think, therefore I am,” and to 
think negatively is Just as sure proof as to think 
affirmatively. I no longer say, “I deny, therefore 
TY am,” but, “I affirm, and in the act of affirmation 
I declare that I am here.” 

But immediately I am conscious that I am not 
alone. If I say, “I am here, and nothing else is,” 
and as I write down my own existence as the one 
article of my creed, I reach for pen and paper and 
face the fact that pen and paper are just as tan- 
gibly present as I am, and so are the floor, the ta- 
ble, the chair, the window and the earth, the trees, 
the lake and the sky. 

I need not stop to enumerate them—I am here 
and I am not alone. Let me go forward this one 
step, grouping everything outside myself into one 
category, yet even in that act finding that I can 
not wholly shut myself out of this other classifica- 
tion, and let me call this group of pen and paper 
and chair and table and earth and lake and sky by 
some elastic name, however inexact—I know that 


25 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


there is a world, and that I am in it and a part 
of it. 

This did not take us long, but it goes over the 
essential ground which philosophers have to trav- 
erse when they speak of “the subjective’ and “the 
objective.” The baby makes the same discovery 
when he finds that the pink toes under his petticoat 
are a part of him in a sense in which the petticoat is 
not. He has made a profound discovery, the mu- 
tual limitations and essential relationships of the 
subjective and objective. 

We are getting rather deep into ractap hee 
and are willing. We can go no deeper, nor can 
any one else. We began by denying everything, 
and we have already come a far cry from that. 

Now I discover that the not-me part of this 
world is divided into two parts, the like-me and the 
unlike-me parts. 

I raked the falling leaves of late summer and 
filled a wheelbarrow with them. My little grand- 
daughter stood by, expectant. She had reason to 
believe a free ride awaited her. She said, “Grand- 
pa, the wheelbarrow is full; there is not room for 
one more leaf,” 


THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE 


“There is room for just one more leaf,” I said, as 
I caught her up and seated her on top. “There is 
room for a little leaf from the tree of life.” 

To which she responded, “This little leaf can 
walk and talk.” 

So it ean, thank God! “We all do fade as a 
leaf,” even as Isaiah said, but some leaves can walk 
and talk and some can not. My little grand- 
daughter, and her brother, and her father and 
mother, and her grandmother, all belong to the 
like-me class, and so do the butcher and the baker 
and the candlestickmaker and the iceman and the 
milkman and the school-teacher. 

T am not the only one of my kind. I am not so 
eminent in my isolation as I thought. There is a 
world, [ am a part of it, and I have company. 

IT am shut in a very beautiful prison, with five 
windows. There is a wide window I call sight, and 
one somewhat narrower but still of good width 
which I call hearing; another that I call touch;.a 
narrow one that I call taste and a very tiny aper- 
ture that I call smell. All the knowledge I have of 
the world outside myself is gained through one or 
more of these five windows. 

27 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


I can not see all of myself nor do any or all of my 
five senses constitute my best knowledge of what I 
callme. I do not think of myself as the man I have 
heard singing bass or talking about books and bag- 
pipes and cabbages and kings, or the man I have 
seen in the glass, but as the man I know in my 
thinking and in my purposes and my emotions. [ 
see a hollyhock that I planted, and I remember 
that I planted it; I admire its color and decide to 
plant another one. In this swift process I move in 
a vast threefold orbit. I think about the hollyhock, 
and feel a sense of joy in it; I make a plan about 
it, and in all these things relating to the hollyhock I 
know not only the flower but myself. I can think; 
I can enjoy; I can plan, and all these in my rela- 
tion to so small a thing as a hollyhock. 

We began by denying everything, and we are 
far enough along to admit the five senses, the pro- 
cesses of the mind, and the existence of things out- 
side, some of which things are people. Some leaves 
on the tree of life can walk and talk. That is 
enough about things, including such things as my- 
self. I am now ready to go further. I soon accept 
as undeniable axioms such declarations as these: 

28 


THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE 


Out of nothing, nothing can come. 

Every effect has a cause, and every effect be- 
comes a cause. There may have been, and I think 
must have been, a first cause, but I do not see how 
there can ever be a last cause. 

Things exist; something must always have 
existed. 

That which first existed must have had in it the 
potency of all that now exists. Nothing can have 
evolved in the development of the universe which 
was not potentially present when the universe 
began. 

Thinking did not begin with me, nor with other 
feeble thinkers like me. There has been thought 
from the beginning; there must be a great Thinker. 

We may go further and say that the fact that 
there is love is proof of a great Lover. 


I am writing these words on a typewriter. It 
has the name of the maker stamped on the front; 
but if there were no such name there, I should 
know that it had a maker. No one could make me 
believe that forty pounds of steel junk had been 
_ dumped into my study and that it climbed upon the 
table and made itself into a typewriter. The man 
who made this typewriter knew something about 
machinery; he knew the English alphabet; he 

29 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


made large, plain white letters on the black keys, 
and those letters correspond to letters on the type 
bars. ‘This machine did not happen. It was made 
by some one who had in mind just such uses as I 
put it to. 


Things do not happen. There is a cause for 
every effect. 

There was a great First Cause. 

There is a present Greatest Cause. 

In different languages they call Him by differ- 
ent names. | 

In my country we call Him God. 

I have no quarrel with people who prefer 
another name, but that is the name [ shall use. 

These are the facts we assume: That you and I 
are here; that I wrote this book and you are read- 
ing it; that we are both interested in the same prob- 
lems of life and its meanings, and that we both be- 
lieve in what we call the law of cause and effect and 
ina mighty and purposeful and friendly God. 

I am giving this outline, not as a demonstration, 
but as a swift review of the processes by which I 
arrive at the beginnings of an inquiry into the 
question of life after death. 

I have no purpose to argue with the reader, or to 

30 


THE FOUNDATION OF KNOWLEDGE 


force him to adopt my conclusions. I am not seek- 
ing to compel him to agree with me. I am simply 
trying to find ground solid enough and large 
enough for us both to stand upon while we consider 
the problem of life and death and the life to come. 


CHAPTER III 
FACT AND FAITH 


In THE world where we are resident we are con- 
fronted by certain undeniable facts. One of these 
is death. Hach season the leaves fall and the grass 
withers in the frost. ‘Those forms of vegetable life 
that lve through the winter do not survive for 
many winters. Even the great trees of the high 
Sierras, the oldest forms of life upon this planet, 
live but a trifling thousand years or such a matter. 
The coal we burn is dead trees. The rocks under 
our feet are filled with fossils of life that existed 
uncounted centuries ago. ‘The earth is a great 
graveyard. 

As the leaves die, so do the birds and the beasts 
and the fishes. No single form of life on this globe 
continues in any one individual. Tennyson thought 
of Nature as careless of the individual but careful 
of the type: 

32 


FACT AND FAITH 


So careful of the type? But no, 
From scarped cliff and quarried stone, 
She cries, ““A thousand types are gone; 
I care for nothing; all must go.” 


In one of his delightful poems, Clover, Sidney 
Lanier gave utterance to a feeling which must 
come now and then to every thoughtful man, as he 
views the apparent remorselessness of the mech- 
anism of life. He drew a charming picture of a 
clover-field, and fancied every head of clover a hu- 
man head, the head of an artist, a musician, a poet; 
they were all blossoming beautifully when along 
came that which he called the Course-of-Things: 


Now comes the Course-of-things, shaped like an 
Ox, 

Slow browsing o’er my hillside, ponderously— 

The huge-brawned, tame and workful Course-of- 
things, 

That hath his grass if earth be round or flat, 

And hath his grass if empires plunge in pain, 

Or faiths flash out. This cool, unasking Ox 

Comes browsing o’er my hills and vales of Time, 

And sicklewise, about my poets’ heads, 

And twists them in, all, Dante, Keats, Chopin, 

Raphael, Lucretius, Omar, Angelo, 

Beethoven, Chaucer, Schubert, Shakespeare, Bach, 

And Buddha, in one sheaf—and champs and 
chews, 





<) €2 
eres 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


With slantly churning jaws, and swallows down; 
Then slowly makes advance to futureward, one 
inch. 


So many clover-heads gulped down! So little 
progress! 

When Christian missionaries made their way to 
England in 597, and journeyed as far inland as 
Northumberland, they came to the domain of King 
Ethelbert. It was a serious question with the king 
whether these men should be allowed to teach a re- 
ligion different from that which had been taught 
in the realm. It involved many religious, social 
and political uncertainties. He called a council of 
his nobles and chiefs. ‘There was diversity of 
opinion. Then an aged chief arose and said: 
“The king will remember that now and then as the 
king sits at night with his men, a little bird will fly 
in at a window, and across the room, and out agam 
through an opposite window into the night. From 
the darkness it comes, and into the darkness it goes, 
and it is for a brief space only in the light between. 
Such is the spirit of man. If these men can tell us 
concerning it, whence it comes and whither it goes, 
let us hear them.” 

34 


FACT AND FAITH 


They were heard. Britain heard their message. 
America heard it. Successive generations have 
heard it and there is need that they shall still hear. 
For the spirit of man continues to make its swift 
flight through the narrow interval of life between 
the two great areas of darkness and silence. If 
there be any voices that can tell us whence this life 
comes and whither it goes, let us listen to them. 

Now in this world where death reigns in every 
domain of animal and vegetable life, as well as in 
the constitution of the planet itself, we find this re- 
markable fact, that there exists a belief in life be- 
yond death. How, in such a world, could such an 
idea have entered any mind? ‘The sum total of 
experience would appear to be against it. We 
need not be disturbed by the various forms which 
this belief takes, or the varying and contradictory 
reasons which men give for their belief that death 
is not the end of life. It may be that one man be- 
lieves that this world is so well governed that 
another world is implied in the very goodness of 
this one, while another may believe that this world 
is so bad that another world is necessary to adjust 
the dislocations and staggering inequalities of this: 

35 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


both believe in immortality. We are not con- 
cerned with which gives the better reason for it, or 
whether either reason is good. Perhaps we might 
even say that the worse their logic the better for the 
purpose of our present inquiry. Men of widely 
different views on different and related matters 
somehow agree in their faith that there is life after 
death. 

Nor is it anything adverse to our present in- 
quiry that in all nations men shape their heaven in 
accordance with the condition of their own life on 
earth; it would be very natural that it should be so. 
If the Eskimo could be shown to believe in a 
heaven of hot fires and abundant whale-blubber, 
and a Hottentot in a heaven of snowdrifts and ice 
cream soda, their beliefs would still be of present 
interest, not for the correctness or incorrectness of 
their mental pictures of heaven, but for the fact 
that both these people believe in a heaven of some 
kind. We are not now seeking to determine how 
far any nation or tribe or sect holds the most ra- 
tional or worthy idea of life after death; we are 
content with the discovery that such belief is very 
general. 

36 


FACT AND FAITH 
Ralph Waldo Emerson said: 


I have heard that wherever the name of man is 
spoken, the doctrine of immortality is announced; 
it cleaves to his constitution. 

It has been affirmed by some but denied by oth- 
ers, that no nation or tribe has been found that 
does not believe in life after death. Whether the 
belief is absolutely universal is not of great impor- 
tance; it would be very strange if it were so. Per- 
sonally, I should be surprised if it were so, and I 
think it quite possible there are tribes so low in 
intellectual and spiritual development that no such 
belief exists among them. I could not name such 
a tribe and say that I knew it to be so. I think I 
have not visited any tribe of which this might be 
affirmed. Having sailed around the world and 
back again, I do not remember having encoun- 
tered any people who did not believe in a hereafter. 
The simple American Indian burying a bow and 
arrows with the dead warrior for use in the happy 
hunting-ground, and the Pharaohs of Egypt erect- 
ing pyramids to protect their tombs, or hewing 
deep tunnels in the side of the cliffs that their 
bodies might be preserved to a life beyond death, 

37 


J 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


do but illustrate, each in his own way, a fact so 
nearly universal that for our present purpose it 
matters little, if at all, that there may be some ut- 
terly savage groups, completely destitute of any 
such faith. 

And now the question arises, how did men get 
that faith? Here again I shall not be appalled if 
I am told that in many lands the origin of this be- 
lief is associated with gross superstition; it could 
hardly be otherwise. I am familar with the teach- 
ings of learned men as to how modesty, chastity, 
monogamy, law, order and morality arose from the 
dust and bore flowers. For faith in life beyond 
death I should not expect a much higher origin 
than can be traced for other doctrines which be- 
long to a slowly developed civilization. 

What concerns and profoundly impresses me is, 
that in a world where death is universal, a belief in 
life after death is almost, if not quite, universal 
also. That fact, whatever its explanation, is one of 
profound significance. Indeed, I shall go further, 
and shall say that faith in emmortality is even more 
astonishing than the fact of immortality. 

Let me illustrate that statement. Suppose I had 

38 


FACT AND FAITH 


power to transform a frog into a bird, and wished 
to prepare the frog in some degree for what I was 
about to do. It is easy to imagine how I could per- 
form the transformation, granted I had the power 
which the illustration assumes; but how could I 
possibly make the frog understand, being a frog? 

Is the illustration grotesque? Let it be so, if it 
makes clear my meaning. It is much easier for me 
to imagine myself touching a frog with a wand and 
telling him to fly, and seeing him rise on newly 
created wings, than it is to conceive of any method 
by which I could educate him in froghood for the 
high privileges of birdhood. 

Now if there be a wise and good and Almighty 
Father in Heaven, it is certainly possible for Him 
to grant eternal life to his children; but how can it 
have been possible for Him ever to have given to 
them the faintest glimmering of such a future? It 
seems so utterly inconceivable that one is tempted 
to declare it impossible. But just before we do 
this, we encounter the fact that men very generally, 
and in all conditions of society and civilization, 
have received in some way, an intimation of 
immortality. 

39 


s 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


The fact, if it be a fact, that God has eternal life 
in store for his children, is less wonderful than their 
faith in it. And I have some inclination to believe 
that the faith is evidence of the fact. 


CHAPTER IV 
THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


THERE have been, and doubtless still are, some 
men too honest to admit a belief in immortality. 
We may recall the letter of Thomas H. Huxley to 
Charles Kingsley when the latter had written to 
comfort the great scientist in a time of deep sor- 
row. Huxley appreciated the well-meant en- 
deavor, but answered that he could not arbitrarily 
divide his mind, giving one part of it steadfastly to 
scientific pursuits and the other to the indulgence 
of a hope for which he could find no scientific ev- 
idence. We can and must respect that spirit. Here 
is a man who needs comfort, and denies himself be- 
cause he will not accept it at the sacrifice of truth. 
I have known such men, and I have honored them 
even while I have deplored what seemed to me a 
deficiency in their spiritual development. Let it 
be granted that now the hope for immortality is 

Al 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


greater than the actual belief in immortality. That 
is what might be expected. 


A man’s reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what’s heaven for? 


Tf any man shall say that faith in immortality is 
too stupendous for his acceptance, I will not con- 
demn him. I wonder that there are not more such 
men. The fact of death is so ineluctable, and faith 
in immortality seems so out of character with con- 
ditions of life as we have them. I observe with 
great interest that St. Paul did not denounce men 
who lack such faith, nor call for their expulsion 
as heretics. In writing to the Corinthians he de- 
manded that the church in Corinth should expel 
from its membership an immoral member; in deal- 
ing with other members who lacked faith in the life 
to come, he made no such suggestion. But he was 
not content that those who doubted so precious a 
truth should be left in their doubt. Lovingly, 
patiently and without reproof, he set himself to 
the task of showing to those whom he addressed 
that the hope of immortal life is reasonable, and 
that he who denies himself this comfort and inspi- 

42 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


ration deserves, not denunciation as a heretic, but 
friendly guidance and instruction. 

Certain thinkers, or men who suppose them- 
selves to be thinkers, have prided themselves on 
such proof as they were able to adduce that man is 
a body and possessed of no soul. Professor 
Momerie well said of such: 

“In the whole history of thought there are no 
grosser instances of slipshod reasoning and patent 
fallacies than those in which so-called ‘exact think- 
ers’ have sought to rid us of our souls.” 

I have a bit of sedimentary rock from a very low 
and ancient bed, and in it the fossil of a trilobite. 
The trilobites were abundant when there was not a 
backbone on earth. We find their fossils in the 
Cambrian rocks, and less abundantly up to the 
Carboniferous. ‘The man who could find a living 
trilobite would get his name into many scientific 
books; but the trilobite itself would be good for 
nothing. Nature has forgotten that experiment. 
Yet there was a time when the earth and the ful- 
ness thereof was the trilobite’s, and it seemed that 
all that could be necessary was for trilobites to 
grow larger and thicken their shells, that no other 

43 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


form of life would ever rule the earth. But one day 
there appeared some courageous type that said, 
“T will risk the damage to my outer and unpro- 
tected self and use the material of the outer shell 
for a backbone within.” It was a perilous thing to 
do; but Nature rather admired the audacity of the 
undertaking and ran a quivering thread of nerve 
along the bone, and made a little knob of nerve at 
its upper end; and the backboned creature began 
gradully to use the bunch of nerve instead of a 
shell, and the nerve became a brain. ‘This was Na- 
ture’s reward for the courage of the absence of the 
shell. And thenceforth the world was given over to 
the dominance of the creature without shell, but 
with a stiff spine and a brain. And Nature’s ex- 
ploration in the direction of the trilobite proved a 
blind alley. 

So interested did Nature become in the creature 
with the backbone, she gave him large attention; 
and, indeed, there are few things more interesting 
to this day than backbone. Nature then began 
making coal for coming life possessing brains and 
backbones. And there the trilobite fossils cease. 
So far as we can see, the progress of the trilobite 

44 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


ended without permanent advance along that line 
toward a dominant type of life. 

The trilobite escaped some perils by remaining a 
trilobite, but the end of that choice was death. The 
creature that made the perilous choice of a spine 
chose the immediate hazard, but the final way of 
life. 

Some one has written most interestingly of the 
moment of supreme peril in the life of the mos- 
quito. It is when, having passed through several 
changes to adapt its life to the water in which it is 
born, it leaves the water behind. It finds itself pos- 
sessed of wings and an instinct to use them, and 
makes its way out of the water. It has never been 
on land, and no mosquito has returned from the 
shore to assure its companions in the water-world. 
Its wings are wet and untried; there is no one to 
teach it how to use them; there is no one to help it 
up the bank; it faces a most appalling peril, one 
fatal to millions of mosquitoes. But all the mos- 
quitoes that survive are those who make the 
venture. 

Now that is an analogy for faith. For here I am, 
an inhabitant of the world in which I was born, 

45 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


feeling wings that have never been spread, and 
impelled by an inward impulse toward a life which 
faith alone reveals, and I make that venture of 
faith. I dare declare myself a child of the God I 
have never seen, and a citizen of the heaven where 
T have never been. I choose to climb the banks and 
leave the lower level for that of faith. The choice 
is not without its perils, but it is that which gives 
my soul companionship with God. It is the might- 
iest moment in the evolution of the soul—the mo- 
ment in which it accepts its high-born destiny by an 
act of faith in the unseen. Some men have faltered 
and fallen back, but the career of those who have 
succeeded is the history of the spiritual progress of 
the human race. 

There is no known process by which the soul can 
reach its spiritual heritage by passivity. We may 
not sit idly and await our transformation into the 
divine image by processes external to ourselves. If 
we are saved into our spiritual heritage it will be 
because God has appointed us heirs of salvation, 
and ordained the means for our evolution into the 
liberty of the glory of the children of God; and be- 
cause we respond to the act of God by a mighty 

46 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


effort of faith by which we apprehend and appro- 
priate our divine heritage. 

The earlier theories of evolution assumed that 
the progress of the world was by exceedingly slow 
and painfully laborious process. This is still partly 
true; but the advancement of life is also by oppor- 
tune and decisive leaps and bounds. There are sud- 
den and immediate transitions by which a form of 
life rises instantaneously to claim a higher sphere 
as its own. The experience of the mosquito Is re- 
peated in varying forms in the metamorphosis of 
other types; and it is analogous to spiritual trans- 
formation in which faith faces its problems and its 
privileges. The evolution of the human soul is an 
appeal to faith in an umsgen God, a hazardous pil- 
grimage toward an unrealized destiny. All about 
us are the evidences of our relations with the world 
of matter, but within us is the impulse of the in- 
dwelling God who made us in his own image. ‘The 
triumph of faith in human life, causing men to 
assert their divine heritage, is the supreme fact in 
evolution, and is analogous to a thousand facts 
which have marked the progress of life from its be- 
ginnings. It is the triumph of “resident force” ° 

AT 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


over an environment of the material. It is the 
determination of the being made in the image of 
God to declare himself related not alone to the dust 
but also and supremely to the Deity. 

There is no adventure so thrilling and hazardous 
as that of the soul in its quest of truth. The quest 
lies along no royal highway, straight and plain; it 
lies through regions as trackless as the path to the 
poles, and marked with the tragedies of men who 
have become confused, lost their way, and died in 
the wilderness. It is almost a wonder that man- 
kind has not agreed to write “No Thoroughfare” 
at the beginning, and give up the quest. It would 
seem so much easier to take the world at its face 
value, its present cash value, and cease bothering 
about the meaning of things. But the soul of man 
rises to the challenge of the universe, and goes forth 
to find the meaning of things, and at the heart of 
that meaning he has good right to hope that he may 
find an eternal goodness. 

It is not an easy quest. Do not deceive yourself 
on that point. | 

Men are incurably religious. They will still 
make the perilous adventure of faith. They will 

AS 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


send forth their souls into regions dark and fear- 
haunted, where there are no sure marks to guide 
them, and they will not come back, but will press 
on with ardor and glad heroism, determined to find 
a reason at the bottom of things, and that reason 
rooted in eternal goodness. 

But the land through which they have to travel 
is not wholly a wilderness. ‘There are wells here 
and there in the desert, and there is manna. Here 
and there is a landmark erected by a brave soul who 
has made some satisfying discovery; and on one 
high peak, where it catches the first light of dawn 
and holds it longest into the gloom, stands the 
Cross of Christ, and the light that illumines it 
streams from an empty tomb. 

If our faith in immortality were really false, we 
should wish to know it. The sooner we get down 
to rock bottom the better. If the world is hope- 
lessly bad, let us face the fact. If Pontius Pilate 
represents the last word in civil government, and 
Annas and Caiaphas are the real typical priests, 
and the voice of the people is not the voice of God, 
but the yell of the mob crying “Crucify Him!” let 
us know it. If death ends all, and even the Holy 

49 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


One of God still sleeps in Joseph’s tomb “in the 
lorn Syrian town,” let us not delude ourselves with 
any false hopes. We can know the hard truth bet- 
ter than we can afford to hug a delusion. 

But if these hopes are false hopes, what hopes 
are true? What hopes have better right to be true 
than these? What may more fittingly declare the 
justice of God and the sure reign of righteousness 
than this? 

We are mistaken about so many things related 
to the making and government of the world, it is 
well for us not to be too dogmatic concerning mat- 
ters on which we merely speculate; but it is a sig- 

| nificant fact that our faith in immortality is bound 
up with our belief in the divine benevolence. The 
| hope of immortality where it exists is inseparably 
bound up with the faith that goodness is at the 
| heart of things. It is our faith in goodness that 
gives us faith in immortality. It is that same good- 
ness that alone could make immortality worth hav- 
ing. We dare not affirm that life would be a fail- 
ure if it had no continuance beyond the grave, but 
we are fully justified in declaring that life after 
death is a precious corollary of our faith in the 
goodness of God and of the value of life. 
50 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


Life might be good, and not continue forever. 
God might be good, and have larger plans than 
that any one man should live eternally. But our 
hopes of life after death are inseparably related to 
our faith that God is good. Men will not believe 
in immortality, and in the face of the contradic- 
tions of life can not well believe in immortality, un- 
less they first believe in the goodness of God. Not 
only so, but immortality on any other hypothesis 
would be not a blessing but a curse. If God be not 
good, we dare not risk another life if we can avoid 
it. And if God is good, it is not easy for us to 
imagine how that goodness can be compatible with 
the wasteful and reckless destruction of that which 
has cost Him most and has in it largest possibil- 
ities of worth to Him. Goodness and immortality 
stand or fall together. And they stand. 

The blossom is not censurable for not being 
fruit; yet it would be a rash blossom that would 
deny its own capacity of growth into fruit. The 
worm is not at fault for not being a butterfly, but 
the worm is justly censurable if it denies itself 
Whatever luxury and nobility of spirit may be pos- 
sible to it in the contemplation and hope of being a 

51 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


butterfly some time. Whether any such prophetic 
premonition can come to a worm, we may not 
know. If into the mean little soul of the worm 
there can enter now any suggestion of what it is to 
be, the most foolish and utterly stupid thing the 
worm can do is to deny itself the assurance that one 
day it shall take to itself a form of beauty and the 
power of flight. We can imagine it a mirth-pro- 
voking experience for the worm to proclaim such 
an astounding faith. All the testimony of the 
senses would be present to deny it. ‘The owl in his 
wisdom might well be expected to hoot at it, and 
every atheistic goose to greet its proclamation with 
hissing contempt. There would be no worm pres- 
ent to testify that it had ever seen a worm evolve 
into a butterfly. Yet if the worm with the aspiring 
soul were a truly wise worm it would trust its in- 
tuitions, its inspirations, its faith. It would say, 
“T intend to be just as good a worm as a worm can 
be, but I am more than a worm; I possess the 
promise and potency of becoming a butterfly. 
Nay, even now, in my soul, I am a butterfly.” 

We know another thing, that the worm that de- 
nies to itself the validity of this impulse of immor- 


52 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


tality is forever and hopelessly lost. That is to say, 
the worm that refuses to enter the chrysalis gets 
killed by the frost. The worm that thinks it not 
worth while to bury itself in a dark little place of 
its own spinning, but to live on in its wormhood, 
remains forever a creature of the dust, a thing to 
be trodden on and finally to perish in the cold. It 
is his trust in this which may be called his instinct 
of immortality that preserves his life at all, and 
preserves it to the coming glory of his later and 
more beautiful existence. 

But there is still a further thought: 'The worm 
that hath this hope in him is not wholly a worm. 
You can not justify yourself in any scientific clas- 
sification which disregards the fact that this pro- 
phetic hope establishes his genus among butterflies. 
It is not simply that he is to become a butterfly; 
even now, while he crawls, every scientist on earth 
will agree to his classification among the forms of 
life that have in them inherent capacity for flight. 
That is to say, we may affirm that any worm that 
hath this hope in him hath butterfly life. We may 
use, and the Bible does use, the present tense. It 
does not say “shall have,” but “hath.” There is no 

53 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


mistaking the emphasis upon the present tense. It 
is strictly accurate and scientific. The instinct that 
is to drive the worm into the chrysalis must be reck- 
oned with in a scientific study of the worm, and it 
compels his classification with the winged and 
beautiful forms of life. He that believeth hath the 
glorified life. 

Let us make it as plain to ourselves as we can 
that this prophetic instinct in the worm that impels 
it to weave and enter the chrysalis does more than 
relieve the monotony of wormhood with a pleasant 
illusion of something that the worm does not know 
very much about. It is the thing that makes con- 
tinuous and glorified life attainable, and it already 
makes the worm necessarily classifiable as some- 
thing above a worm. It would be the most irra- 
tional thing possible for a worm to deny the 
authority and validity of that dim but potent hope. 
And if that would be folly for the worm, how much 
more so for us! By the grace of God, we are not 
worms. We are more than creatures that grovel in 
dust. And one of the things that make us so is the 
compelling power of this hope. 

The hopes that elevate us above the dust, that 


oA 


THE QUEST OF TRUTH 


lift up our heads and give wings to our most enno- 
bling and God-like aspirations, these are the hopes 
which we have good right to possess. We need not 
be too economical of them. They are a valid part 


of the equipment which we bring to our quest of 
truth. 


CHAPTER V 
A RIGHTEOUS GOD 


Be iEF in immortality has for its inevitable basis 
some such foundation stones as these: 

This world is to be interpreted as intention. It 
is the product of intelligence and conscious 
purpose. 

The universe is friendly. ‘There is in it a Power 
that possesses the quality of love. Love makes the 
mother bird capable of risking her life for her nest; 
love inspires the music and the blossom; love is at 
the core of things. 

There is behind the phenomena of nature, and 
operative through nature, including the nature of 
humanity, a Power which is parental and personal. 
There is a mighty and a righteous God who cares 
what happens to his creation, and is great enough 
to accomplish what He knows to be best. 


I find no rational basis for faith in immortality 
in any form of atheism. Unless there is a God who 


36 


A RIGHTEOUS GOD 


loves, and has taught us to love; unless there is a 
God who possesses life, and has given us life, then 
I think faith in immortality is probably a delusion. 
As a matter of fact, I think people do not believe 
in immortality unless they believe in God. We 
must believe in a God who is strong enough to ac- 
complish his will, else we shall sigh with Tenny- 
son’s King Arthur: 

O me! for why is all around us here 

As if some lesser god had made the world 

But had not force to shape it as he would? 

And we must believe in a God with goodness 

equal to his power. We can not be happy in the 
contemplation of a God who is driving a pitiless 
Juggernaut over the suffering generations, work- 
ing out a majestic program in which love has no 
part. Tennyson grew furious when he contem- 
plated this possibility: 

No more! A monster then, a dream, 

A discord; dragons of the prime, 

That tear each other in their slime, 

Were mellow music matched with Him! 

Thomas Hardy has considered the possibility 

that mortal man may be more just than his Maker; 


57 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


that the creature may have evolved above the 
moral level of the being who created him; that man 
may have higher moral views of God than God 
himself possesses: 


Strange that ephemeral creatures who 
By my own ordering are, 
Should see the shortness of my view, 
Use ethic tests I never knew, 
Or made provision for! 

Yes, that would be strange, so strange that we 
have little occasion to consider its possibility. 

It is hardly conceivable that God would make 
creatures so much better than Himself that their 
perfection would mock his imperfection. It is not 
worth much time arguing that an immoral God 
would create morality, or that a God not Himself 
immortal would or could have bequeathed as a leg- 
acy which He never had, the gift of immortality to 
man. 

There is no blackboard demonstration of the 
goodness of God; one must accept it on faith or die 
a coward. ‘There is no way of making the matter 
perfectly sure. A man must be one 


Who trusts that God is love indeed, 
And love creation’s final law, 


58 


A RIGHTEOUS GOD 


Though nature red in tooth and claw 
With ravin shrieks against the creed. 


If he is not willing to risk that venture of faith, 
he will hardly arrive at a belief in immortality. 


Those who are without God are without hope in the } 


world. 

But let no man affirm too soon that he does not 
believe in God. Some men say they do not believe 
when they mean that they are bewildered or that 
they are seeking for more light. Let no such man 
call himself an atheist, for he is not. 

There is one wide department in theological sci- 
ence called Teleology, which means reasoning from 
adaptation to creative purpose. It is an argument 
which, standing in the midst of creative energy, 
reasons forward with the good which is operative 
in the world to its logical result, and backward to 
the inferred intent of the Creator of that good. It 
assumes that agencies converging to a definite and 
rational result are the manifestation of intelligent 
purpose. There are forms of the teleological argu- 
ment which are obsolete because they attempted 
too much. But the major premise of the teleolog- 
ical argument is sound, namely that order implies 

59 


* Sete 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


purpose; and the minor premise is the working 
principle of science, that the methods of the uni- 
verse are orderly and rational and consistent. 

I have a portrait of the President of the United 
States, woven in silk. JI have seen the looms at 
work weaving patterns of this character. They are 
amazingly intricate, dropping a strip of perfo- 
rated cardboard for each thread carried by the 
shuttle, and compelling fascinated attention by 
their bewildering ingenuity. The pattern is woven 
wrong side out, and the nature of the pattern is not 
always evident to the unskilled visitor. But any 
guess as to the pattern being woven is also a guess 
at the intent of the maker of the machine. That is 
the important point just now; the one end involves 
the other. We stand midway of the process, 
watching the mechanism of hfe. And when we 
learn a little of the end of life we have learned 
something also of the purpose of the God from 
whom life proceeds; and when we have learned 
something of the character of God we have some 
knowledge of the end toward which God works. 

As I watch the loom, I may be confused and 
wonder whether the intelligence is in the machine 

60 


A RIGHTEOUS GOD 


or the maker or the operator. But in time I shall 
come to some definite opmion. The maker has 
wrought his own intelligence into the machine, and 
imparted a knowledge of his purpose to the opera- 
tor; and so the maker, the weaver, and the ma- 
chine conspire to a common and a definite end, an 
end which I may see if I am patient, and which in 
the case of my illustration, is the portrait of the 
President. 

Life is such a machine, and I am myself the 
weaver as well as the journeying inquirer. And 
the answer to my puzzled inquiries is that life is 
working out a picture, a fabric, a product, an end. 
I see it wrong side out and I see it in the making; 
but there is the pattern, not stamped upon life 
with some foreign substance, but woven of the very 
stuff of human life. And I become assured that it 
is weaving out of the warp and woof of common 
manhood a transcript of the character of God as 
seen in the face of Jesus Christ, and reproduced in 
the lives of humble men and women. That is 
enough; and I may go on, like Oriental workers in 
suk, spinning as I walk; for I know the end for 
which it is designed. 

61 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


In the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia a 
little company gathered about a man who took 
from his vest-pocket a little box whose cover was a 
silver three-cent piece, and which contained a min- 
iature steam engine. Its base was a gold half-dol- 
lar, and its boiler contained a dozen drops of water, 
more or less; but he lighted the tiny alcohol lamp, 
the water boiled, and the microscopic engine 
worked. He set it down on the base of the great 
Corliss engine that operated all the machinery of 
the Exposition, and the two ran side by side. The 
machinery of man is too clumsy for such an engine 
to share with the great Corliss the labor of operat- 
ing the Exposition. But with God it is not so. It 
is permitted me to run a tiny thread to the great 
band-wheel of the universe, and yoke my energy 
with God’s. It is not much, to be sure; and the few 
drops of alcohol in my lamp are burning fast; but 
I am not merely a part of the machinery that is be- 
ing run; I am a part of the power that operates 
and controls. ‘This is the end for which life was 
made. ‘This is a part of the structural plan of the 
universe. ‘This is the destination toward which we 
journey. 

62 


A RIGHTEOUS GOD 


There is in the life of man a kinship with that of 
God which enables the mind of man to discern the 
purpose of God, and in that purpose to know the 
end. This is the needle of human certainty that 
points unerringly toward the pole of God’s own in- 
tent. We can follow the needle when we can not 
see the stars. The road whose end is unseen is not 
an endless road. We walk by faith, not by sight, 
but we are not lost. We sail by “dead reckoning,” 
but we are not derelict. We make our journey 
with inward assurance that we are following to the 
right end. 

A visitor with no particular mechanical genius 
or interest, wandering listlessly and _ wearily 
through a great building in a World’s Fair Eixpo- 
sition, will be likely to stand for a moment or two 
and regard with interest some particularly huge 
and complicated mechanism into which disappears 
a considerable quantity of raw material, as cotton 
thread or white paper, but of which no more is seen 
than that these things are swallowed up amid the 
clatter and whirr of the machinery. It will be the 
good fortune of some of these people as they pass 
along beside the great invention to see the finished 

| 63 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


product come out in woven cloth or imprinted 
newspapers. In that moment the observer has a 
momentary thrill like that of a discoverer, and 
says, “Why, it is weaving cloth,” or “It is printing 
paper!” but the man in charge if he overhears, can 
hardly answer otherwise than, “Of course it is: that 
is exactly what it was made for.” 

The world is a mighty press or loom into which 
goes the raw material of life, and concerning whose 
processes and results there is more or less bewilder- 
ment and uncertainty. There is a current phrase 
which speaks of it, or of one man’s part in it, as 
“the grind,’ and so mechanical is the thought of the 
age that the term is not without its appropriate- 
ness. But it has been given to some fine souls to 
discern the meaning of life’s mechanism in its fin- 
ished product, and they find this meaning so large, 
so exalted, that they can not restrain the discov- 
erer’s shout of “Eureka!” It is to these men that 
St. Paul addresses the confidant affirmation of the 
truth: “Now He that wrought us for this very 
thing is God.” Have you discovered that man has 
before him a high destiny? St. Paul answers that 
it could not be otherwise. God hath wrought us, he 

64 


‘A RIGHTEOUS GOD 


declares, for a mighty and triumphant purpose; a 
purpose disclosed in our present possession of the 
Spirit of God, by whom the work now in progress 
is to become complete. Hear these exalted words 
of his concerning the Godlike character to which 
we are ordained, and the glorious immortality to 
which we are bidden to aspire. ““Now he that hath 
wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also 
hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit.” 

The glory of the series of world’s fairs which has 
erected one “white city” after another in various 
parts of our country has not caused some of us to 
forget the old exposition which annually for a 
series of years took place in Chicago. There I first 
heard Theodore Thomas in the old exposition 
building many years ago. 

One day there came a village pastor to see the 
great exposition in Chicago, in its then new build- 
ing on the lake front; and having a bent for me- 
chanics, and some experience and skill, he soon 
sought the machinery; and, wondering that ma- 
chines so many and varied should be running with 
power from a single source, he found his way to 
the engine room. 

65 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


And what do you think he said when he saw the 
great engine? 

He said, ‘I made it!” No; he was not insane, or 
deceiving. And the discovery was as complete a 
surprise to him as to those who heard him. 

He examined the massive giant from end to end; 
there was no doubt about it; 1t was his very own. 
He had crept through its bulky boilers before they 
had a single flue; he had crawled beneath them 
when they were first set up; he had witnessed and 
superintended the casting of every part; he had 
overseen the adjustment of every bolt and valve 
and rod; it was his own! 

As a boy he had been bred a mechanic, and had 
become a skilled machinist in a New England ma- 
chine-shop. His firm established a branch house 
at Buffalo, and put him in charge of it. The great- 
est single work of the branch under his administra- 
tion was the building of a powerful engine for the 
Adams mill on North Clark Street in Chicago. 
Trusted with the responsibility of so important a 
work, he spared no effort to do it superbly well; 
and when the engine was ready to be set up he 
came to Chicago and built the engine into its place. 

66 


A RIGHTEOUS GOD 


In time he took a course in theology and entered 
the ministry, and became a pastor in Illinois. The 
Chicago fire had laid the city low, and the large 
mill had been destroyed; that chapter of his experi- 
ence seemed to have left no memorial; it was, ex- 
cept to himself, as if it had not been. But when 
the debris of the fire had been cleared away, the 
fine engine was found but little injured. And so 
when George Huntington, then pastor of the First 
Church in Oak Park, visited the exposition, he 
found his own engine which he supposed perished; 
found it still strong and steady, and doing a bewil- 
dering variety of work far beyond the dreams of 
the man who made it. 

After the road of life comes to what seems to us 
its abrupt termination; after the wreck and disas- 
ter of what we call death; the motive power of our 
present life will abide, indestructible. And I think 
we shall stand in heaven bewildered with wonder- 
ing joy when we discover that the structure of 
life’s mechanism is adapted to almost infimitely 
varied and celestial uses. We shall say with Paul, 
“Now he that wrought us for this very thing is 
God.” | 

67 


CHAPTER VI 


THE DUST OF THE EARTH 


WE ARE made of the dust of the earth, We 
know the chemical ingredients. We daily replen- 
ish by our eating the dust which we as constantly 
wear away. We are told, and I presume it is true, 
that so rapid is the attrition of this dust within us 
that as often as once in seven years an entire 
change takes place, and that no human being has 
in his body a particle of blood or bone or fiber 
which helped to compose his body seven years ago. 
To dust we shall return. We shall not be long 
about it. I have had but little experience in the 
removal of bodies once interred, but I have seen 
enough of it to know that a very few years suffice 
to leave of any man very little dust that can be dis- 
tinguished as having ever belonged to him. 

Moreover, the processes of our birth and devel- 
opment, the means of sustaining life and of its re- 

68 


THE DUST OF THE EARTH 


production, all deal with facts so elemental, so close 
akin to the soil and smut that there is very little 
opportunity for any one to think of himself in 
terms of too great exultation. But if He who 
made us of the dust is God, then the very dust 
takes on new significance in that fact. 

I dined one night with Professor T. C. Cham- 
berlin of the University of Chicago, and I asked 
him, ““What is the dividing line between Geology 
and Astronomy?” If I had been just a little more 
ignorant than I am, I might have supposed that 
the business of the geologist stopped with the sur- 
face of the earth; but I knew better than that. 

He did not hesitate a minute. He knew just 
how far his science had property rights. He said 
that it ended at the point where the earth’s attrac- 
tion equaled that of the sun; the point on the one 
side of which a body would fall to the earth and on 
the other side toward the sun. He said that point, 
which varied more or less with the three unequal 
axes of the “spheres of control,” had a minimum 
radius of 620,000 miles. 

I asked, ““That is all settled, is it?” 

He said, “The precise distance in miles varies, 

69 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


but the point when the earth’s attraction equals 
that of the sun is the line of division between the 
astronomers and the geologists.” 

Now, the geologist deals with a science that is of 
the earth, earthy and of the rocks, rocky. His 
business is strictly underfoot. And yet when you 
tell him to keep his feet on the earth, here he is de- 
manding 620,000 miles up in the air as belonging 
also to his science. 

If the geologist whose science sends him around 
wrth a hammer knocking off pieces of rock de- 
mands 620,000 miles of room above his head for 
his science, I shall not heed for a minute the advice 
of those who admonish me to keep always on the 
level of the ground. I will not saw off my vision on 
the level of my eyes, or reserve Just room enough 
to wear a silk hat without bumping into imprac- 
tical theories. I am a child of earth, but I am also a 
child of God. 'The science with which I deal re- 
quires as its very base line all that the geologist 
counts his own; and if I get as much as that, I think 
I shall claim more. For all worlds belong to God; 
and if God is my Father, what is God’s, is mine. 

I also know about another line, that between 

70 


THE DUST OF THE EARTH 


earth and sky. That line is not some hundreds of 
miles up in the air; it is the level of the ground. I 
walk and move in the sky. My feet are on the 
ground, but my head is not on the earth. When I 
swim in the little lake under my windows I have 
my body in one element and my head in another. 
So when I walk, my feet are on the ground, but the 
region where my head is, is as truly sky as is the 
space between the stars in the cluster of the 
Pleiades. 

A few years ago there appeared in the news- 
papers a poem by James Oppenheim entitled 
Earth’s Song. It is not in any sense a religious 
poem. It is a strong appeal based on the very sub- 
stance of things in Mother Earth that have entered 
into the life of man, to rise above dust and be the 
crowning wonder of creation. In it the old earth 
remembers her girlhood, when warm and young 
she felt the love-warmth of the sun and thrilled 
with the pain and joy of motherhood, longing all 
the while to be 


A planet disclosing to skies my glorious ones, 
A world that should lead all the worlds, all the 


planets and suns; 
71 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


and how she put more and more of her life and 
hope into each successive form of life to which she 
gave being, weeping over some of the pitiful dumb 
animals that as yet were her only children: 


And I aged with despairing ages, till strange chil- 
dren walked 

On the radiant hills, and in strange ways they 
talked. : 

My poor, dim children! Then with my might of 
mights, 

Caught in birth-throes, caught in a fire of the 
heights 

Of creation, I strained through that life to my top- . 

| most span, 

And lo, on my breast lay my one sheer miracle— 
Man! 


How the Earth-Mother gloried in that child of 
her old age—that miracle of maternity! How for 


the first time she felt on her bosom a child that 
could really know and understand and aspire! 


Man that could answer me back from the hush 
where I dwelt, 

Man that could think in his brain all the passion I 
felt, 

Man that could light all my peaks with his laughter 
and song, 

Man that could live and could love and could 
dream and could long. 

72 


THE DUST OF THE EARTH 


How much of the stuff of earth and sky had 
gone into the making of this man! 


O man, if you could but know what a glory you 
are! 

Into you went the fire of the sun, my star; 

Into you went the millions of ages of me! 

Into you went the millions of ages to be! 


How shall we answer the yearning of the ages 
for the expression of their finest aspirations and 
deepest longings in a manhood and womanhood 
that can know and feel and love as we are capable 
of knowing and feeling and loving! 

We are made of the stuff of the glorious earth 
and the beautiful sky. We are children of star 
dust and sunlight. Into our being has gone the 
material of the stars and suns. 

Aye, more than this, we are children of parental 
love from the beginning of time. Into our mirac- 
ulous lives God has put the yearnings and patience 
and suffering hope of the ages. Into our lives 
have gone the prophetic smiles of mothers, and the 
honest toil of strong fathers since the first man and 
woman walked the earth. There is not a genera- 
tion that has lived on earth since Adam was created 

73 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


to whom we are not debtors. Shall we repay this 
investment in our lives with only such return as 
men found possible in less favored ages? Shall we 
even be content to fall somewhat below their heroic 
and strenuous endeavor? 

We are children of God. Into our lives has gone 
the sacrificial love of our heavenly Father, and the 
redemptive ministry of Christ. We have inherited 
the travail of the ages. With more of meaning 
than Napoleon before the battle of the Pyramids 
we may cry aloud to our souls, “A thousand centu- 
ries look down upon us.” 

We are made of the dust. ‘That is good material. 
My friend, Professor Frost, of the Yerkes Observ- 
atory, explained to me the mysteries of the spec- 
trum as the astronomer is able to isolate the light of 
a single star, and to determine accurately just what 
elements there are in process of combustion. He 
told me, as we stood beside the massive telescope, 
that this universe is really a universe; that the 
same essential elements, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen 
and the rest, which are the basis of our solar sys- 
tem, are the material bases of all the suns which his 
great telescope, pointing its long interrogation- 

74 


THE DUST OF THE EARTH 


point night by night out among the stars, can dis- 
cover. He added that most of these same elements 
are in our own bodies; we are made of the best 
stuff in the universe. 

That is a fine discovery. We thrill with all the 
fire of all the suns. We are akin to the dust and to 
the Deity. Angela Morgan has expressed this in 
one of her uplifting poems: 


I am aware, 
As I go commonly sweeping the stair, 
Doing my part in the every-day care— 
Human and simple my lot and share— 
I am aware of a marvelous thing: 
Voices that murmur and ethers that ring 
In the far stellar spaces where cherubim sing. 
I am aware of the passion that pours 
Down the channels of fire through Infinity’s 
doors: 
Forces terrific with melody shod, 
Music that mates with the pulses of God. 
I am aware of the glory that runs 
From the core of myself to the core of the suns, 
Bound to the stars by invisible chains, 
Blaze of eternity now in my veins, 
Seeing the rush of ethereal rains 
Here, in the midst of the every-day air— 
I am aware. 


795 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


I am aware, 
As I sit quietly here in my chair, 
Sewing, or reading, or braiding my hair— 
Human and simple my lot and my share— 
I am aware of the systems that swing 
Through the aisles of creation on heavenly 
wing; 
I am aware of a marvelous thing— 
Trail of the comets in furious flight, 
Thunders of beauty that shelter the night, 
Terrible triumph of pageants that march 
To the trumpets of time through Eternity’s 
arch. 
I am aware of the splendor that ties 
All the nee of the earth with the things of the 
skies, 
Here in my body the heavenly heat, 
Here in my flesh the melodious beat 
Of the planets that circle Divinity’s feet. 
As I sit silently here in my chair, 
I am aware. 


CHAPTER VII 
THE POWER OF LIFE 


I sHOULD like to begin this chapter with an accu- 
rate definition of life. That would go far toward 
making the book immortal, for I do not know any 
dictionary which contains such a definition. When 
a learned lexicographer defines life as “the sum of 
those forces which resist death,” he is simply say- 
ing that he does not know how to define life except 
in terms of its apparent opposite. And when he 
comes to define that opposite, he would have to re- 
turn and say of death that it is that which opposes 
life. And so we should find ourselves midway 
between the two, with no definition of either. But 
we know what life is, even if we can not define it, 
and, as we are to consider the power of life, it 
would be well if we could define the word power. 

Not only is it difficult to define the word, 
“power, it is not easy even to define the idea with 

77. 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


entire clarity. The Century Dictionary devotes 
some three columns of closely printed matter to 
the attempt. It tells us that power is an endow- 
ment of a voluntary agent whereby it becomes pos- 
sible for that being to do or effect something; or, a 
property of an inanimate thing whereby it is pos- 
sible for it to modify other things. Negatively, 
and as the first definition, it is “such an absence of 
external restriction and limitation that it depends 
upon the inward determination of the subject 
whether it will or will not act.” Very well; but, 
the external restriction being removed, what is it 
in the animate or inanimate object which causes 
the subject to act? What is power? What is grav- 
itation, chemical affinity, electricity, sex-attrac- 
tion, the ability of a maple tree to lift in the course 
of a season ten tons or a hundred tons of water, to 
say nothing of changing that water into sap and 
the sap into wood-fiber, leaf and blossom? The 
Encyclopedia Britannica has an interesting and in- 
tricate discussion on the transmission of power, but 
nothing about the nature of power itself. What is 
power? And in what sense is life, power? 
Machinery does not produce power; on the con- 
78 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


trary, it consumes power. ‘The best. locomotive 
wastes more than ninety per cent of the power that 
is resident in the coal. Machinery merely trans- 
mits or utilizes power. What is power itself? 
This universe appears to be throbbing with 
power of several kinds. ‘The kinds of power may 
be classified according to several categories; but 
viewed in one way there are two kinds, the kind 
that pulls and the kind that pushes. ‘There is at- 
traction and there is repulsion. Who knows what 
either of them is or why it operates?) We know of 
some forces which are convertible into each other. 
We behold a flash of lightning, and define its en- 
ergy as light. A tree is struck, and we discover 
the energy of lightning displayed as force. We 
place our hand on the wood that has been rent, and 
find it hot, and we learn that heat as well as light 
and force are potentially present in the lightning’s 
flash. We may repeat the experiment with the 
electric wire in our room. It is possible to screw in 
a bulb that will give light, or the attachment of an 
electric iron that will develop heat, or the motor of 
a sewing-machine that consumes power. One kind 
of energy along the wire is thus convertible. In 
79 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


the chemical laboratory other transformations be- 
come possible. 

But what of the controlling agent in all these ex- 
periments? Power is manifested which produces 
all these modes of energy, but there is no known 
way by which such energy can be produced by 
forces apart from antecedent energy. 

Life itself is a power. 

The question is hotly debated among physicists 
and biologists whether we are able to pass from the 
non-living to the living world without a break. 
There are eminent men who believe that, strictly 
speaking, all matter is alive. They hold that the 
laws of crystallization, and of atomic energy dis- 
play agencies which are logically to be classified as 
living forces. If so, the universe is Just so much 
more wonderful than we have supposed; nor are we 
at all disturbed by their discussions. We still won- 
der with John Burroughs at the power and per- 
sistency of life: 

When for the third or fourth time during the 
spring or summer I take my hoe and go out and 
cut off the heads of the lusty burdocks that send 
out their broad leaves along the edge of my garden 


or lawn, I often ask myself, “What is this thing 
80 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


that is so hard to scotch here in the grass?” I de- 
capitate it time after time and yet it forthwith gets 
itself another head. We call it burdock, but what 
is burdock, and why does it not change into yellow 
dock, or into a cabbage? What is it that is so con- 
stant and so irrepressible, and before the summer 
is ended will be lying in wait here with its ten 
thousand little hooks to attach itself to every skirt 
or bushy tail or furry and woolly coat that comes 
along, in order to get free transportation to other 
lawns and gardens, to fresh woods and pastures 
new ? 

It is some living thing; but what is a living thing, 
and how does it differ from a mechanical and non- 
living thing? If I smash or overturn the sun-dial 
with my hoe, or break the hoe itself, these things 
stay smashed and broken, but the burdock mends 
itself, renews itself, and, if I do not watch out, will 
surreptitiously mature some of the burs before the 
season is passed, 

Evidently a living thing is radically different 
from a mechanical thing; yet modern physical sci- 
ence tells me that the burdock is only another kind 
of machine, and manifests nothing but the activity 
of the mechanical and chemical principles that we 
see in operation all about us in dead matter; and 
that a little different mechanical arrangement of 
its ultimate atoms would turn it into a yellow dock 
or into a cabbage, into an oak or into a pine, into an 
ox or into a man. 


Apart from all technical definitions with which 
81 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


we have no quarrel, there is such a thing as vital 
force. A titled woman in Germany, having no 
faith in immortality, had the courage of her con- 
victions, or the lack of them, and caused herself to 
be buried in a tomb of masonry covered with a 
heavy stone slab, on which was inscribed a declara- 
tion of her opinion that was the end for her. She 
was mistaken. A tiny seed found lodgment in the 
mortar, took root that fed upon her body and grew 
to a tree that burst the slab asunder. I have seen 
a photograph of the tree growing from this tomb 
proclaiming nature’s own refutation that death is a 
finality or the tomb impregnable. 

Just as surely as the tree has inherent in its life 
the power of lifting water and transforming it into 
sap and wood-fiber and leaf and blossom, so has the 
spiritual life its own lifting power. It can raise 
men out of despondency, desolation and sin. It 
can lift and transfer them and make them sons of 
God. It can give them a hope which is more than 
a gentle and pleasurable sensation; a hope that is 
alive and full of dynamic vigor. 

It is a hope that is as certainly capable of trans- 
forming life as an alkali is of modifying an acid. 

82 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


“Every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth 
himself, even as He is pure.” It is a hope that 
makes life more worth living, and that robs death 
of its terror. It is the power of an endless life. 

The lifting power of life 1s marvelous, whether 
manifest in the tree lifting tons of water, or in man 
lifting his own weight in walking; but the most sig- 
nificant fact about the power of life is not its abil- 
ity to lift but its ability to select and direct. Doctor 
William Hayes Ward, toward the end of his long 
and fruitful life, published a book entitled, What 
I Believe and Why. In this he says: 


It is of the very essence of life that it gives guid- 
ance, is purposive. ‘This separates it from mere 
physical forces, such as the attraction of chemism. 
It has a previsioned end to achieve. It aims to cre- 
ate a man, a tree, then to keep them repairing 
themselves or growing to an ideal perfection. Out 
of the common sap the atoms distribute themselves 
after a preconceived scheme to organize into bark, 
wood, leaves, petals, stamens, pistils, seeds, Just as 
we knew they would when we planted the peach 
stone. This is very purposeful life. Life chooses, 
sorts, selects, directs, sees and reaches a distant 
aim. Whence comes this outreaching, selective, di- 
recting power? 

‘The mere biologist does not try to answer this 

83 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


question. He is content to see it, to state its laws 
and give names to the usual processes of life, and 
then he too often thinks that the naming of a law is 
an explanation of its force. An apple falls to the 
ground. We ask “Why?” and we are told that the 
attraction of the earth draws it. Attraction is from 
the Latin word attraho, meaning to draw; and so 
we are told that drawing draws it and get nowhere. 
We have simply given a general name to a familiar 
fact, but why the apple falls to the earth, we have 
not learned. So vitalism, or vital force, is but a 
name we give to an observed order of process. It 
explains nothing. Its marked character is its fore- 
sight. 


That interesting, provocative and depressing 
book, The Education of Henry Adams, has an il- 
luminating chapter on “The Dynamo and the Vir- 
gin.” It is a kind of foot-note to the author’s 
effort to discover a dynamic theory of human 
history. What is the motive power of society? He 
says that he haunted the French Exposition of 
1890, “aching to absorb knowledge and helpless to 
find it.” In that same fruitless quest he had gone 
through Harvard, had studied law, had taught 
History, and apparently his education had made 
him increasingly ignorant. The sum total of igno- 
rance which he accumulated during a life of study 

84 


a 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


was colossal. In this Exposition he became might- 
ily interested in the dynamo, particularly in its 
application to the use, the beginning, of the auto- 
mobile. He also learned about radium, which as he 
said, “denied its God,” or what to a certain scien- 
tific friend of his was the same thing, “denied the 
truths of his science” in which all forms of energy 
were supposed to have been tabulated and defined. 
Neither in science nor in history was he able to 
discover a sequence between cause and effect, be- 
tween the springs of human action and recorded 
fact. Certain superficial relations were apparent, 
but what and where was the power? 

In the Exposition stood a notable work of 
American art, the General Sherman statue by 
Saint Gaudens, which now stands at the entrance 
of Central Park in New York. There was the lean, 
lithe, nervous, determined man; and under him was 
the thin, wiry, swift, capable horse that bore him 
“from Atlanta to the Sea”; and before this group 
was the female figure, a Winged Victory. “For a 
symbol of power, Saint Gaudens instinctively pre- 
ferred the horse. Doubtless Sherman also pre- 
ferred it. The attitude was so American that, for 

85 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


at least forty years, Adams had never realized that 
any other could be sound taste.” Adams said that 
Saint Gaudens, who was with him in Paris, “could 
never discuss or dilate upon an emotion, or suggest 
artistic arguments for giving to his work the form 
which he felt.’ ‘The two went to Amiens and 
looked at the Cathedral, and Adams reflected that 
that magnificent temple represented the triumph 
of a power beyond that which Sherman’s horse 
could represent, and which Saint Gaudens felt but 
could not articulate, when he placed the symbolic 
figure in front of the swiftly moving steed. The 
worship of the Virgin built Amiens. Artists of 
this generation, even those like Saint Gaudens at 
Amiens, and Matthew Arnold at Chartres, “felt a 
railway train as power; yet they, and all other ar- 
tists, constantly complained that the power em- 
bodied in a railway train could never be embodied 
in art. All the steam in the world could not build 
a cathedral. ‘That called for worship, it might be 
superstitious worship, but it was worship express- 
ive of a power above and beyond that of the 
dynamo.* 





*The Education of Henry Adams, pp. 387-8, 
86 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


The more intimate and closely reasoned studies 
of life which have characterized our time have com- 
pelled a new and more careful analysis of the phe- 
nomenon of death. And we make this discovery, 
that death and hfe are not complete opposites. We 
do not speak with entire accuracy when we say that 
a lifeless thing is “dead as a door-nail.” A door- 
nail is not dead, for it has never lived. Death is not 
to be affirmed of a thing that has not had life. 
Death is itself a phenomenon of life, the final phe- 
nomenon, as it appears to the observer, but even so 
a less instantaneous and single matter than has 
been supposed. Life continues, so recent scientific 
tests affirm, in certain organs after the death of 
the body. Particular organs have been removed 
from a dead body, and have manifested the power 
of life for variable periods. Death is a thing to be 
predicated only of things that have lived; and of 
its totality and finality we can not afford to be dog- 
matic. We have much to learn. 

It is not in its biological but in its ethical and 
spiritual aspect we are concerned with these mat- 
ters of life and death. We deal with it as a 
universal experience with important spiritual im- 
plications. 

87 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Death is an event which every man must face as 
a certain experience of his own. It is the great 
leveler. It is like the flood of Noah’s day; there is 
no man tall enough to rise above it. 

For the vast majority of mankind, death has no 
especial significance. For very many it is a very 
stupid and commonplace event. They simply lie 
down and stop breathing. Some may be longer 
about it than others; some groan, some lie quiet; 
but all die. 

But now and then there is a man who makes 
some death significant. He may do this in one 
way or in another. Abner died as the fool dieth. 
Others have died likewise. In that fashion they 
wrenched death from the commonplace and flung 
life away to the accompaniment of folly. 

But other people have succeeded in dying nobly, 
immortally. It is not wholly the manner of their 
death. Jesus and the two robbers had an identical 
experience so far as the crucifixion went; but his 
cross was not like theirs. Somehow, Jesus was 
able to meet death in a way that robbed that great 
enemy of his victory. Jesus made death 
significant. 

88 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


It is the glory of the soldier who fights for a 
great cause that he is able to utilize an experience 
which he must share with all sorts and conditions of 
men, and even with the brute creation, and make it 
significant. 

Some men have ‘said that if Jesus Christ had 
lived the life He lived and taught the truths He 
taught, and died a natural death, it would have 
meant as much to the world. 

They talk nonsense. 

If Jesus had lived as He lived, his life would 
have been unspeakably precious; if He had taught 
as He taught, the truths He uttered would have 
been among the greatest heritages of mankind; but 
his life and his teachings take on a dignity and 
spiritual significance with his death which the 
great teachers from the apostles down have rightly 
evaluated. 

Death may be a very insignificant event. 

It is easy to die; men have died for a wish or a 
whim; 
For bravado, passion or pride. 

Yes, that is true. Some deaths have been incon- 

sequential; some might as well have occurred years 
89 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


before they did, and the world would have been, if 
anything, better; some deaths have been wasteful, 
and some have been shameful; but some have been 
noble, and have inspired the lives of later genera- 
tions as living alone could never have inspired 
them. 

We hardly need to be reminded of the brevity of 
life. | 

It is the universal testimony of old men that to 
them life has seemed short. Fiven a life of three 
score years and ten is a restricted life, and if by 
reason of strength the years be four score, yet the 
life is soon cut off. 

All of our plans are made with the knowledge 
that we may not live to carry them out. We press 
through the world with a feverish haste as if we 
were not to be here long. 

The Apostle James, the brother of Jesus, asked, 
“For what is your life?” and answered: “It is even 
a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then 
vanisheth away.”—James 4:14. 

Ife was speaking well within bounds when he 
compared life to vapor. Measured in the propor- 
tion of its length to the boundless extent of time, 

90 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


the life of any one man is too brief to be repre- 
sented by a vapor; measured by the proportion of 
his bulk to the mass of the universe he is altogether 
too insubstantial and insignificant to be thought of 
even as the tiniest speck in a vapor. 

If the man of science be asked concerning human 
life in its relation either to the stretch of time or the 
bulk of the universe, he would say what James said 
and say it more emphatically. 

If we take a handful of marbles, one of them 
large and glistening, the others small and varied in 
size, and roll them around in a silk hat, we might 
get a scale for the measurement of our solar system 
in its relation to the rest of the universe. 

Placing that solar system in Chicago, with our 
world perhaps as a pea among the marbles, one 
might start and walk to Cleveland one way and to 
Omaha the other before he began to find many of 
our nearer neighbors among the fixed stars, and 
the world is not wide enough for us working upon 
that scale of proportion to reach anywhere near the 
edge of the visible universe in which our sun is a 
mere speck of golden dust—one of the smaller 
stars in the Milky Way. 

91 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


In such a universe, what is a solar system like 


ours ¢ 
What is our world, and what is man? 
Of man, in his relation to the universe, Harry 


Kemp has written: 


God made a million atoms, each by mortals called 
a “world”; 

Like dust-motes in a beam of light, they dartled, 
circled, whirled; 

Yet all these million worlds, compared to ail his 
might did rule, 

Were in the Universal Whole one tiny molecule. 


The mortals on these shining specks spake of God’s 
space as “far,” 

And every bright companion-mote they hailed as 
“world” or “star.” 

(They should have known the Eternal Mind no 
need for measures hath; 

God looketh down the Milky Way as down a gar- 
den path; 

The distance from our outmost sun unto his 
throne, no doubt, 

Is a hand’s breadth in his seeing, or too small to 
measure out. ) 


These manikins then fought and died on many a 
shining mote— 
For what they dubbed as “empires” sworded one 


another’s throat; 
92 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


Kach nation on its anthill swarmed and sang a pa- 
triot song, 

And stormed another anthill to avenge an emmet- 
wrong: 

And thus they hated, loved and lived until the end 
of time, 

While up the weary rounds of life a million worlds 
did climb. 


Then flash! Two molecules collide and worlds ex- 
hale in mist, 

And back into a fiery ring do melted empires twist, 

And cities in solution hang and drop in fiery rain, 

And the sinew of the tiger fuses with the poet’s 
brain; | 

All back into one element trees, mountains, oceans, 
glide, 

And not one life is left to strut and swell in pom- 
pous pride— 


Then some far-worlded telescope which chance did 
thither turn 

Beholds this starry funeral pyre minutely flame 
and burn. 

“Lo!” thinks the awed astronomer, his star-map at 
his side, 

“Upon yon utmost verge of night a star was born 
and died.” 

And so they numbered eons there, and cherished 
histories gray! 

Oh, but they battled, loved and dreamed for a 
clock-tick in God’s day! 


93 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Life is a vapor. But what is a vapor? It is all 
that it ever has been. It was a pearly raindrop 
that fell down from the skies; and as it fell, it 
brightened and made beautiful the flower in whose 
golden heart it lay, and then, dropping to the earth, 
watered the root that there might be other flow- 
ers; and then, by subterranean channels breaking 
forth into a spring,-it flowed singing to the sea, 
turning the wheels of industry as it went, and 
laughing in the sunlight as it bore great ships upon 
its blue bosom. | 

The sun caught it up and it vanished into heaven, 
smiling as it rose. All this the vapor was and is; 
all this it did and does. It appeareth for a little 
while and then vanisheth away. 

But when it vanishes it rises fragrant with the 
odor of the flowers it has refreshed, dignified by 
the burdens it has borne, radiant with the honor of 
thirst it has quenched, and jubilant in the memories 
of service it has rendered. 

It vanishes away, but as it vanishes, the sun 
catches it up mto heaven, pours through it the sev- 
enfold glory of its prismatic splendor and imparts 
to it a radiance fit for the diadem of God. 

94 


THE POWER OF LIFE 


It vanishes away, but as it vanishes it smiles in 
the glow of promise of joyful service still to be, and 
its rainbow gladdens the eyes of men and reminds 
them of the covenant of God. 

There are lives like that. They appear for a lit- 
tle time and then vanish away. But they come to 
earth trailing clouds of glory, and they vanish fra- 
grant with the memories of a beautiful and varied 
ministry to their fellow men. 

They flow through the channel of their years, 
leave behind them holy and sacred memorials, and 
when they vanish they overarch the two worlds; at 
this end are glorious memories, and the gold at the 
other end of their rainbow is the pavement of the 
city of God. 

And the vapor is not lost. It is one of the cer- 
tainties of modern science that every particle of the 
vapor abides. It disappears, but it is indestruct- 
ible. We see it: 


Like the snowdrop in the river, 
A moment white, then fades forever. 


Forever? No! It has fallen, faded, risen and 
blessed the world a million times; and unborn gen- 
erations will see it, taste it and be refreshed by it. 

95 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


There are lives like that. They come to earth, 
live, love and pass away. But they are not lost. 
The sweet influences by which they made life bet- 
ter are added to the invisible cords that bind the 
world to the throne of God. They are not lost. 
They live, and live forever. 


CHAPTER VIII 
SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


Tr 1s often affirmed that science knows nothing 
of life after death. This is true. It is also true 
that it knows next to nothing about this present 
life. Science observes life as a phenomenon and is 
able to classify some inferences and deductions 
concerning it, but that does not imply that science 
understands the present life of man. 

I have seen in a medical college a series of jars 
containing the constituent ingredients of a human 
body. ‘There was a large glass vessel containing a 
few gallons of water; there was a smaller jar con- 
taining a few pounds of lime; and there were salts 
and solids of various sorts, a spoonful of iron and a 
pinch of phosphorus, It was an interesting exhibit 
and doubtless had its educational uses, but no stu- 
dent, J am confident, was ever encouraged to sup- 
pose that he would be taught in that school how to 

97 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


mix together that water and lime and the rest and 
make a man. 

Furthermore, if scientists were not themselves 
men, and had never seen a man, and had only those 
jars of material at hand, they would have been as 
helpless to conjecture anything about this present 
life as they now are and must be about the life to 
come. Concerning this life, they are able to talk 
and write with a modest approach to wisdom, but 
they could not have imagined it if they had never 
seen it. But here it is, strange beyond all compre- 
hension yet undeniably real. If their scientific in- 
vestigation does not prove a future life, neither 
does it prove a present life, apart from the actual 
experience of it. No scientist claims more than 
this, and, if he can not prove a life after death, nei- 
ther can he prove that such life does not exist. 

Inertia is a property of matter; but growth is a 
law of life. Each lifeless thing in all this vast uni- 
verse will stay where it is placed until something 
moves it, and remain as it is until something 
changes it; but every living thing though molded 
by forces without, is also shaped by powers within. 
The inorganic world is static; the organic world is 

38 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


progressive. Moved upon by the forces of vitality, 
dead matter feels within it the throb and thrill of 
life and responds to laws beyond its own domain. 
This is the perpetual miracle of nature. In the tree 
that lifts its tons of earth and water high in air, and 
transforms them into sap and leaf and fruit; in the 
flower that roots itself in unfeeling soil and turns 
it into petals of beauty and of grace; in the bird 
that eats matter and sings music; in the man who 
consumes carbon and oxygen and thinks thoughts 
that soar among the stars and explore the long 
reaches of eternity, the law is the same. In each 
and every one of them, life transforms matter by 
the laws not of matter but of life. Inertia gives 
way to growth; the laws that govern from without 
share their domain with forces resident within. In 
every one of them is wrought the change spoken of 
by the Apostle Paul: the corruptible clothes itself 
with the glory of the incorruptible; mortality is 
swallowed up of life. Matter ceases to be dead. 
Earth becomes “crammed with heaven, and every 
common bush afire with God.” Inertia still is a 
law of matter; but life rules matter. Upon the 
inert forms of matter are stamped the impress of 
99 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


animation; and within it are the potency and the 
passion and the progress that belong to life. 

Gradually, and through a number of centuries, 
the thinking of the world has modified with respect 
to the relation of life to the universe. Changes 
that are recent go back in their beginnings and are 
seen to have been involved in discoveries much more 
remote. 

In 1542 Copernicus published a book which he 
had completed twelve years before, but had with- 
held for fear of persecution, showing the sun 
and not the earth to be the center of the solar sys- 
tem. It was nearly a hundred years before that 
theory as enunciated by Galileo came to the atten- 
tion of Pope Urban VIII, who demanded the 
recantation of Galileo. Galileo recanted, but the 
earth moved, and continued to move. 

Meantime, other minds were moving with the 
earth. In 1687 Isaac Newton set forth his theory 
of gravitation, showing the invisible power that 
holds the planets in their orbits round a central sun. 

Still another hundred years, and in 1796 La 
Place published his Exposition du Systeme du 
Monde, in which he set forth his Nebular Hypoth- 

100 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


esis. And even a little before his time James Hut- 
ton had uttered the first word of the new Geology, 
declaring the rocks to have been laid through 
successive ages which reveal “no trace of a begin- 
ning; no prospect of an end.” 

In 1858 Charles Darwin published his Origin of 
Species, and in 1871 his Descent of Man. It now 
appears that there was uninterrupted progress 
from the beginning of this series of movements. 
They begin with astronomy and end with man, even 
as the psalmist considered the heavens as the works 
of God’s fingers and then bowed in wonder before 
the greater power that made man but little lower 
than God, and crowned him with glory and honor. 

It would be safe to say that no one of these the- 
ories stands to-day precisely as enunciated by its 
author. Copernicus, Newton, Hutton, La Place 
and Darwin have all given place to later interpre- 
ters of the universe. Yet each of them wrought an 
epoch-making change in the thought of the world. 
We may discard the Copernican theory, but we 
never shall go back to the Ptolemaic. We may 
give up the theory of star-dust as held by La Place, 
but we shall never go back to a theory of instanta- 

101 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


neous creation. We may think of Darwin as an 
obsolete authority, but we shall never re-establish 
the theories of life that existed before his day. The 
changes which wait our thought in future lie not 
behind us in the line of progress. Straight ahead 
they may not lie, but backward they do not and can 
not retreat. New theories may not have come to 
stay, but the old ones have gone forever. 

There is a very real sense in which religion is 
independent of all these changes. God, sin, duty, 
salvation, are all the same to men whether they live 
on a flat earth or a round one; whether the earth 
was created in a week or a million years, whether 
man was originally perfect or has ascended from 
lower life. No man ever had a right to nail the 
truth of the Bible to the questionable truth of his 
theory about the order of events in the first chapter 
of Genesis. And those do still err, and greatly, 
who assume that men have great spiritual need to 
settle as spiritual concerns the doubtful and chang- 
ing hypotheses of current science. The apostle 
who said that neither circumcision availeth any- 
thing nor uncircumcision, would have said that, for 
the real problems of the soul, neither evolution 

102 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


availeth anything nor special creation, but faith 
that worketh by love; and that though we have all 
knowledge and understand all mysteries we shall 
have missed the real spirit of religion unless we 
have the spirit of Christ. 

Yet because the religious thought of every age 
expresses itself in the language of that age; and 
because religion relates itself to the whole man, it 
has become inevitable that theology should have 
come to express itself in terms of more or less sci- 
entific analogy. If we are to have any books that 
perform for this generation such service as Butler's 
Analogy performed in its own age, those books 
must do what Butler did, must employ the latest 
words of science as it now is. If there is any Nat- 
ural Law in the Spiritual World, that natural law 
must be interpreted in terms of modern science, and 
according to the analogies of the men whose busi- 
ness it is to know science. Hence, naturally, inevit- 
ably, and very properly, our religious writing has 
been cast in a scientific mold; and the evolutionary 
philosophy is in our religious treatises, and in 
our high school text-books, and in our college 
lecture rooms, and in our theological seminaries, 

yp \108 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


It is not incumbent on the modern minister that 
he preach evolution. It matters little to the con- 
tent of his message how men came to be what and 
where they are. His message is to men as he finds 
them, and has respect to what they may become. 
But this is incumbent on any minister in any age, 
that he speak the language of his generation, and 
clothe his thought in the terms of his contempora- 
ries. He may speak with the tongues of men and 
angels, but he will be to his own generation a bar- 
barian unless he utters his message in the nomencla- 
ture of his own day. If he preach in a region where 
men believe the world flat, he need not assume it to 
be his duty constantly to proclaim the theory of a 
round earth, but he will be careful not to seem to 
make the flat earth a cardinal doctrine of religion. 
The shape of the earth does not greatly concern his 
message; but it is important that his message shall 
express itself in terms of the best knowledge of 
those to whom it is delivered. 

Hence it has come about that all our present-day 
preaching and writing more or less assumes the 
phraseology of scientific speech; and even those 
who oppose the conclusions adopt the terms of the 
scientific world. 

104 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


We have no need to decry this condition. We 
could not help it if we wanted to, and we do not 
want to do so. To try to keep it back would be 
Mrs. Partington’s attempt to mop out the Atlan- 
tic. Upon the sea our boat is launched and we are 
in the boat. 

But it is all the more important that we know 
how far and in what direction these theories bear 
us, and within what limits we have chart and rud- 
der. For there are some who adopt the theories of 
progress in ascending life, who have not fully reck- 
oned with their import. And there are others who 
assume that because the universe shows progress 
and plan, there is little need of anxiety or concern: 
for “God’s in his heaven: all’s right with the 
world.” 

But the doctrine of evolution, while a doctrine 
that strengthens our argument for an all-embrac- 
ing purpose of an invincible God, is a very solemn 
doctrine as applied to the responsibility of the indi- 
vidual man. It offers no escape for unfaithfulness ; 
it teaches no lesson of comfort to him who neglects 
his duty. 

For a generation we have talked about the strug- 

105 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


gle for existence and the survival of the fittest. 
And sometimes we have spoken words of truth, and 
again we have spoken words of cruel error. Tor 
that which constitutes fitness for the struggle does 
not always constitute fitness for the survival. 
Some years ago Doctor Reuen Thomas uttered a 
warning lest too shallow a view of evolution make 
us cruel and unfeeling, and directed the mind of 
those whom he addressed to its deeper and often 
neglected lesson of brotherhood and the social 
spirit as taught in nature: 


For a generation we have been almost slaves to 
two ideas which are associated with the name of the 
great naturalist Darwin. One idea goes by the 
name of “Natural Selection” and the other we 
know as “the Survival of the Fittest.” Natural Se- 
lection, of course, means that Nature favors some 
organisms instead of others in consequence of dif- 
ferences in the organisms themselves. ‘The “fittest 
to survive” are those which are most adaptable to 
the surroundings in which they find themselves. 
These two ideas have had the field and have 
wrought most disastrously in politics and in the po- 
litical use of military power. We have had to 
listen to the horrible dogma that Nature intended 
and therefore the Author of Nature intended that 
the strong should subdue the weak. Small nations 
were intended to be exploited by large nations. 


106 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


“We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities 
of the weak, and not to please ourselves’ —such 
apostolic words were laughed out of court. Mil- 
itarism got a new sanction. The old George III 
Toryism lifted up its head in England once more. 
Nature was Tory. Brotherhood as an ideal and an 
alm was scouted. 

Recently men have risen who, working aong 
evolutionary lines, have pushed into mental and 
moral regions, and have shown that such ideas as 
those by which we have been enslaved, have a larger 
content than their originators perceived. The 
physically strongest may be only representatives of 
a gilded barbarism. 'The most effective among 
men (and even among animals) have been those 
capable of coming into fraternities for mutual 
helpfulness. There is, if only we will look for it, a 
Sermon on the Mount embedded in Nature. When 
once we have the fine tone and temper of that ser- 
mon in ourselves, we shall find it elsewhere. Peo- 
ple are ruled by ideas. If our ideas of life and its 
purpose are wrong, our politics will be wrong, our 
domestic life will be wrong, all our conduct will be 
wrong in spirit and in tendency. ‘To say “it does 
not matter what your opinions are providing your 
life be right” is arrant nonsense. The last note in 
evolution is that we are members one of another. 


The theory of evolution does not assure us that 
all progress shall be upward. It assumes that life 
presses outward from its various centers in every 
direction, seeking unoccupied space for itself. It 

107 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


often grows downward. The white ghost-flower 
called Indian pipe was once a true flower, with red 
petals, but growing in the shade it lost the glow 
from the blossom and the green pigment of the 
stalk; it now grows in the dark glen, hanging its 
head for shame, the ghost of its former self. It has 
made progress, and has found a place where it may 
survive. But its progress has been degeneracy, 
and the only place it now can live is in the dense 
shadow of other vegetation that has learned to 
nourish itself in the sun. 

We do well to remember, and it is pleasant and 
profitable to remember, that the perishing of an- 
cient Greece has left us, not the bickerings and 
petty commonplaces of her ordinary life, but those 
monuments to her greatness that stand out in bold 
relief above all that could degrade them by too inti- 
mate a knowledge of the meaner elements in the 
lives of the men who produced them. But we need 
also to remember how much good has escaped, and 
how much evil has survived as the years have gone 
by. 

Nature has shown some of her most consummate 
skill in the fashioning of creatures for our torment. 

108 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


What, for instance, is more perfectly adapted to 
its end than the proboscis of the mosquito? Some 
of the types least desirable have longest lease of 
life. Aristotle theorized about the origin of certain 
insect pests; Aristotle died, and his theory is obso- 
lete, but the pests are with us still. The gnat and 
the flea harassed the armies of antiquity. Leon- 
idas and his three hundred Spartans died at Ther- 
mopyle and their descendants in Chicago peddle 
fruit from push-carts; but the insect scourges of 
the ancient world are still with us in unabated 
vigor. 

The theory of evolution does not assure us that 
there shall be no failures; it does not promise that 
there shall be no loss of type, no experiment not 
visibly productive of good; but it gives us hope that 
creation as a whole shall not fail, and that the 
highest types will dominate. 

The doctrine of evolution may be interpreted 
not as antagonistic to immortality, but as almost 
requiring it. It may cause us to look backward 
across the ages in which we have battled with a 
brute ancestry, and say with Paul, “If after the 
manner of men I have fought with beasts at 

109 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise 
not?’ It may cause us to declare with ‘Tennyson 
that the very facts of our humble origin affirm that 
we were born to higher things than the life of the 
beasts that perish, and to an inheritance incorrupt- 
ible, undefiled and that fadeth not away: 


I trust I have not wasted breath; 
I think we are not wholly brain, 
Magnetic mockeries; not in vain 

Like Paul with beasts I fought with death. 


Not only cunning casts in clay; 
Let science prove we are, and then 
What matters science unto men, 
At least to me? I would not stay. 


Let him, the wiser man who springs 
Hereafter, up from childhood shape 
His action, like the greater ape, 

But I was born to other things. 


Any thinking person must now and then seek in 
his own mind an explanation of existing things. 
When we once have learned, as we soon must learn, 
that an effect implies a cause, we find ourselves | 
seeking causes for all perceived effects. Not only 
so, but we seek to unify our knowledge, and to find 

110 


RAIL ERNE AIG sy 
re aaa 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


a cause sufficiently great and inclusive to account 
for all existence. Our difficulty is not wholly one 
of bulk. If that were all we could mentally mul- 
tiply the power of causation as we perceived the 
aggregate and diversity of effect. What troubles 
us is that we have so many kinds of effect and such 
apparently contradictory effects. If we were mind 
only and not matter, we might the more easily 
account for mind; or if we were matter only, and 
yet able to think at all, we might with the more 


_. consistency become materialists. But we still must 


say with Byron that “If Bishop Berkeley says 
there is no matter, then it is no matter what Bishop 
Berkeley says.” And we say to the materialist 


. that even such thinking as he does is a denial of 


materialism. Matter and mind are both here, and 
the two combined are more than twice as hard to 
account for as either one alone. Good and evil are 
both here. ‘That fact would not be strange if . 
there were two eternal and equally balanced prin- 
ciples, each represented by a god equal in power to 
his opposing god; but it is very difficult to account 
for if there.is but one God. For most people it is 
convenient to divide the universe very nearly into 
1il 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


two equal parts and to hold the devil accountable 
for about half of what occurs. 

If everything appeared to us to be good, it would 
not be difficult to hold the theory that all that ex- 
ists is caused by one God and He a good one. But 
when we discover things that appear to us to be cer- 
tainly evil, it is easier to think that there is one evil 
god, even though a minor one, who is responsible 
for that part of creation. To attribute the world to 
one infinitely good God is still more than all good 
people are willing to undertake. 

It is this apparent dualism in the universe as we 
behold it, this alternation of light and darkness, 
this co-existence of matter and spirit with an un- 
defined relation between them, this see-saw of joy 
and pain, this bringing forth of life to be swallowed 
up in death, this age-lasting struggle between good 
and evil, which we find so difficult to ascribe to the 
consistent operation of any one God, be He either 
good or evil. 

Yet, while life’s experiences might seem to imply 
two antagonistic forces, working forever at cross- 
purposes, science does not admit this dualistic sys- 
tem. Weare not at liberty to assume that the wind 

112 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


and the sun, or the cloud and the sun, are hostile 
each to the other, for the sun causes both cloud and 
wind. Forces that appear antagonistic work to a 
common result. The earth is held in its orbit by 
the balance of forces, not hostile but antithetic. 

Thus, as science has thought its way back to a 
theory of essential unity, and in so doing walks by 
faith and not by sight, theology is constrained to 
exercise “like precious faith” and hold to the exist- 
ence of one God, and He a good God. 

The new sciences of the last generation have not 
failed to modify our thought of God. There have 
been at least a dozen of them. Comparative reli- 
gion is new; comparative philosophy is new; com- 
parative anatomy is new. Every science that uses 
the adjective “comparative” is new. Historic 
criticism is new; history itself is new. It is no 
longer a mere chronicle of events. It is a philoso- 
phy and interpretation of life in the perspective of 
these events. It is a study of cause and effect in 
the light of human happenings. Social science, 
sociology, is new. Every other science with the ad- 
jective “social” is new. All these sciences of life 
and all the physical sciences that use the micro- 

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MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


scope, that use electricity, that use radium, that use 
the X-ray, all are new. I well remember when I 
first looked through my hand with the X-ray. 
Every science that recognizes the penetrability of 
matter to light, and every science that attempts to 
make real the relationships of matter to force is 
new. Half the theories of yesterday are on their 
way to the scrap heap, and they have not left un- 
modified our conception of God. We are bound 
either to move God very much farther away or 
bring Him very much closer into the actual thick 
of the conflict of life. The conception of God just 
barely outside, the conception of Paley’s Natural 
Philosophy, of a universe which God wound up like 
a watch and left for us to find, a universe initiated 
by a God who went off and forgot it, save for an 
occasional intrusion by the process of a miracle— 
that conception of God, good as it was in its day, 
will not answer for our present thinking. It is not 
adequate to the strain; God must be moved further 
away, or brought closer than in the thought of the 
old theology—and the old theology was good in 
its day. 

Science is far from being the enemy of faith, 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


Doctor Edward A. Birge, who retired in 1925 
from the presidency of the University of Wiscon- 
sin, devoted his last baccalaureate address to a 
confession of faith, as he had learned it simulta- 
neously from Science and Religion. 

The text of the address, if we may borrow a term 
from the sphere of homiletics, was the scripture: 

“Whereunto shall we liken the Kingdom of 
God? or with what comparison shall we compare 
it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which grow- 
eth up.” 

In early Greek philosophy, and now in modern 
science, Doctor Birge believed he saw the growth 
of the “eternal truth” to which each century adds 
a little and which each thinker serves in his own 
way. He is sure that the processes of the past, 
whose results are now apparent, are operative in 
the same way to-day and with the same certainty of 
continued advance. 


Science had first assembled the facts of the 
world much at random and in_helter-skelter 
fashion. ‘Then it had gradually seen that they 
were integral parts of a structure. Later it was 
realized that the world was an operating affair, an 
organized and going concern, with its own methods 

115 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


and laws. Now there was added the full concep- 
tion of a past and a future, of an historical devel- 
opment, of an evolution which could be read in the 
light given by present operations, just as the laws 
of the Kingdom of God may be found in the 
growth of the mustard seed. 

With this idea as a clue, a new and limitless 
field was opened to science, a field which it has only 
begun to explore, whose extent is even yet un- 
known. But the short century since 1830 has seen 
advances into it along certain lines. For just as Ly- 
ell was completing his Principles of Geology, Dar- 
win was beginning his studies on the species, and 
twenty-five years later he was to apply to that side 
of the problem of life the same fundamental princi- 
ples that Lyell had applied to the history of the 
earth. Darwin told us that if we want to begin to 
know how species have come about, we must look 
first to the pigeon house, to the barnyard, to the 
grain field, and see what forces are operating there. 
Here are processes to be followed out; here is an 
evolution of forms, and the forces behind it are not 
those exercised suddenly by the intervention of un- 
known and incalculable energies; they are those 
now at work in the world about us. To this world 
as a present going concern we must look if we are 
to understand its past, knowing that out of the past 
the present has come. The kingdoms of life in all 
their multiform greatness are expressions of the 
same forces and laws that determine the growth of 
the mustard seed. 


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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


After nearly nineteen centuries of reading, the 
parable of the mustard seed is at last, through the 
aid of science, coming into its own. 


Look where we may—consider universes or 
stars, or turn to atoms and to elements; study the 
earth as a planet or as a structure; look to oceans 
and continents; trace the development of their liv- 
ing inhabitants; or, finally, read the history of man 
in structure and powers—one law appears, and one 
event. We may phrase it as we will, and its ex- 
pression will vary according to the precise nature 
of the revelation that is given and according to the 
temper of him through whom the revelation comes; 
but beneath all variation there appears, as funda- 
mental to the movement of the entire Kingdom of 
God, the law which our Lord found in the mustard 
seed—“it groweth up.” 

The universe in every part from least to great- 
est is moving by an inner life; it has growth; it is 
growing. It has powers and potencies which come 
into action according to opportunity. They find 
constant expression in a development after their 
own kind, according to their own capacity, to ends 
ordained in them and decreed in their own con- 
struction. ‘This is the revelation of the law of the 
Kingdom of God, operative in all parts of that 
kingdom, a law whose disclosure has come grad- 
ually during the past four centuries, as men have 
discovered nature, and whose full scope and signif- 
icance are beginning to be revealed to our own 
day. 

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MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Science, Doctor Birge affirmed, is another form 
of a divine revelation: 


Science is teaching men to look for a progress- 
ive revelation, to expect from nature new truth, 
which will call for change and reorganization of 
former truth. ‘This attitude is nothing new in 
theory, but it is very far from old in practise, even 
for individuals. And as present on a large scale, 
as held by many thousands of thinking men, it now 
reveals a new and surprising temper and leads to 
surprising results. Men’s eyes are turning to the 
coming day—to a developing world—as never be- 
fore. Science inevitably locks to the present and 
future, to a world unfolding before our eyes—the 
mustard seed growing up out of the ground. It is 
sure that the world is “fresh every morning,” and 
that the assurance of the newness requires only 
eyes to see. It is equally certain that its newness 1s 
the natural product of its oldness, that it results 
from growth, from the new expression of internal 
powers. 


At the close of each creative period God pro- 
nounced his work “good.” At the end He called 
it “very good.” He has never called it perfect. 
We talk of the “total depravity of inanimate 
things,” and not without some reason. ‘The Bible 
tells us that creation has been made subject to 
vanity, not because it has a wicked will of its own, 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


which thwarts God’s will, but by the deliberate will 
of God, and that the redemption of creation from 
this subjection to vanity is a part of the hope of the 
universe. We are living still in the dawn of the 
creation Sabbath. God seems to be resting from 
his labors, but really the J’ather worketh hitherto, 
and our work is a part of his, and the dew is still 
on the leaves. This is St. Paul’s explanation of 
much that seems to us awry in the universe. It is 
awry, he says, but itis not completed. It was made 
subject to vanity, instability, liability to decay and 
wrong usage. Nor is it entirely of its own perverse- 
ness nor yet of the will of man that it is so; it is in 
process of completion. It has been so made by a 
conscious act of God, causing it intentional sub- 
jugation to powers from which it is yet to be re- 
deemed. God’s plan is to be judged, not alone by 
the uncompleted work which is now seen, but more 
by the final redemption of all that He has made. 
This redemption begins with mankind, and through 
the revelation of our divine sonship is to be wrought 
the redemption of creation from the bondage of 
corruption into the liberty of our own glory as the 
children of God. 
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MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


That is, the Bible does not affirm that God 
started a machine which He has permitted to get 
beyond his control, and that He is now desperately 
pursuing it in the almost hopeless effort to regain 
it. The Bible says that God is on the throne, and 
ever has been. This is a tremendous assumption, 
but it is scientific. Paul says the creation, that is, 
the world, as we know it, is unfinished; it is the 
germ of the world that is to be. It is coming to the 
birth. The past is pre-natal. These “vanities” and 
sins and sorrows are the birth-throes of God’s ulti- 
mate purpose. ‘There is to be a delivering of the 
creation, a cosmic redemption. 

If we are sure of this, it is no small gain. The 
method of God is discernible in part, and very per- 
plexing in the parts we do not understand, but 
there is a soul in the universe, working out a logical 
result. 

Great minds have sometimes endeavored to re- 
produce the sensation which an intelligent being 
might have experienced if present at creation. He 
would have been filled with wonder and reverence 
at the unfolding of the divine plan—so they as- 
sume. But it is more probable that such a mind 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


would have been completely bewildered at the ap- 
parent contradictions, the long delays when 
nothing seemed to be accomplished, and the un- 
numbered centuries in which the work of creation 
seemed to have been abandoned by God to the play 
of wild and conflicting forces. At infinite cost 
earth crust was formed to be submerged in the 
seething caldron of eruption and upheaval. Beds 
of rock which took centuries to form disappeared 
from sight in a single subsidence. Spots that 
seemed preparing for an Kden were engulfed in a 
deluge when the fountains of the great deep were 
broken up. Forests grew for ages to be buried be- 
neath sand which hardened into rock, and the loss 
seemed irreparable and inexplicable. We could 
not have understood it had we seen it in progress. 
Hence, I say, there has been vast gain that the 
progress of creation, still incomplete, may now be 
discerned; that an end, a purpose, or a series of 
purposes, may now be discovered by an intelligent 
mind. 

Professor N.S. Shaler, in The Interpretation of 
Nature, declared that there has been a perceptible 
progress among scientists in the recognition of pur- 

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MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


pose in creation. “In the study of the succession 
exhibited by plants and animals, it has been per- 
ceived that the march of events from the primitive 
simplicity toward greater and greater complica- 
tion, culminating in man, requires us to assume the 
existence of something like permanent guiding 
influences in the world of matter... . In 
other words, it seems to me that the naturalist is 
most likely to approach the position of the phil- 
osophical theologian by paths which at first seemed 
to lie far apart from his domain” (pp. 46, 47). 

If this be true, and the naturalist and theologian, 
one working from the standpoint of observed phe- 
nomena, and the other from axiomatic or revealed 
truth, and one by induction and the other by deduc- 
tion, meet at length like the workmen from the two 
ends of the Hoosac tunnel, each complementing the 
work of the other, and each affirming the discovery 
of what Professor Shaler calls “something like per- 
manent guiding influences” in creation, immense 
gain has been made that man has been able to 
discover these purposes; and a new teleological 
argument of great cogency is added to those for- 
merly in our possession. 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


A truth is more than doubly valuable when thus 
doubly discovered. It is valuable for what it is in 
itself, and for the confidence in both processes 
which may result in other discoveries. When 
Leverrier and Adams, in 1846, separately com- 
puted the position and orbit of a yet undiscovered 
planet, and Galle, in Berlin, and Challis, in Eng- 
Jand, following these calculations, found the planet 
Neptune through the telescope, the discovery was 
worth more to science than many separate discov- 
eries, either by mathematical calculation or fortui- 
tous telescopic observation. So when the student 
of the Bible and the student of natural history come 
by independent Imes of research to substantial 
agreement upon a truth, the value of that discovery 
is more than doubled. It shows us that the lines of 
study which seem to us divergent really focus 
somewhere, and this gives us reason to believe that 
our study, fruitful in this instance, will be increas- 
ingly so in other discoveries. 

If there is one cbjection offered more frequently 
than another to faith in a life after death, it is that 
such a life must be, in all its essential qualities, so 
far beyond anything we now know, as to be a mat- 

123 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


ter of the imagination only. ‘This seems to ignore 
the fact that imagination is most commonly 
thought of as belonging to the sphere of art. 

In our exercise of the imagination in the sphere 
of religion, we are not going beyond what becomes 
necessary in the sphere of science. Great scientists 
have recognized this, foremost among them Pro- 
fessor Tyndall, who in the beginning of his second 
lecture on Light, says what he expresses more fully 
in his Fragments of Science. He says of the true 
scientist that from the very outset he is dependent 
on his imagination: 

_ “He can not consider, much less answer, the 
question, “What Is Light? without transporting 
himself to a world which underlies the sensible one, 
and out of which in accordance with rigid law, all 
optical phenomena spring. ‘Io realize this sub- 
sensible world, if I may use the term, the mind 
must possess a certain pictorial power. It has to 
visualize the invisible. . . . This conception of 
physical theory implies, as you perceive, the exer- 
cise of the imagination. Do not be afraid of this 
word. . . . I do not mean a riotous power 
which deals capriciously with facts, but a well- 
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So. 


SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


disciplined power whose sole function it is to form 
conceptions which the intellect imperatively de- 
mands.” “He must visualize the invisible.” So 
said Professor Tyndall of the scientist. “He 
endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” So says 
the Bible of the man of faith. ‘The two sound very 
much alike; they are alike. 

All we are claiming for the super-sensible world 
is what Professor Tyndall claims for the sub-sen- 
sible world. And really these two, and the world 
of sense, are one world, three in one; and no one of 
the three is apprehended wholly without the 
imagination. 

All great scientists, therefore, are men of imag- 
ination, and hence of faith. I do not wonder that 
Professor Tyndall thought necessary to warn men 
of the scientific mind not to be afraid of the word, 
for some of them do not know how much they owe 
to their own imagination, and to their faith. I 
could undertake to add some verses to the eleventh 
chapter of Hebrews and to place upon the list of 
the faithful a long roll of names of men of science, 
whose imagination was that of faith. 

By faith Columbus, when he was called of God 

125 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


to discover a new continent, went out not knowing 
whither he went. By faith he sailed strange waters, 
with Cabot, Magellan, Vespucius and Balboa, the 
heirs with him of the same promise; and they be- 
held, rising from the waters, new heavens and a 
new earth, fresh from the hand of God, and be- 
stowed upon men through faith. 

By faith Copernicus lifted the earth from its 
solid base and set it to moving in rhythmic order 
round the sun; by faith he beheld all the suns and 
suns of suns with planets in bright array, circling 
round the throne of God; and this he discovered by 
faith. 

By faith Galileo, when he had been forced to re- 
cant, still testified that the earth moves ever at the 
decree of God; by faith he endured persecution till 
the mind of his fellow men found its orbit in the 
same true faith. 

By faith La Place understood how the worlds 
are made from star-dust, and framed by the word 
of God, so that the things that are seen in the mak- 
ing take their place in the established order of an 
infinite God of goodness and might. 

By faith Newton beheld in the fall of the apple 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


the demonstration of an all-pervading force, op- 
erating by the unchanging will of God, so that the 
worlds are held in place and that not by the things 
that do appear. 

By faith Paracelsus, when he was a-dying, be- 
queathed to those who followed him an imperfect 
science, much mixed with error, but left the inspira- 
tion of his name to others through whom the 
indivisible elements of earth and the laws that 
combine them were made known. 

These all died in faith, not receiving the 
promises, but were persuaded of them and em- 
braced them and moved toward them and _ be- 
queathed to others the heritage of their faith. 

By faith men suffered persecution, ridicule and 
poverty, and walked from office to office wearily 
and in threadbare garb, trying to enlist the sympa- 
thy and faith of their fellow men in things the 
world thought visionary, choosing rather to suffer 
affliction as the children of faith than to sell their 
vision for bread. 

And as for Huxley and Darwin and Tyndall 
and Spencer, these, too, were men of faith, and 
their faith gave substance to the things they hoped 

127 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


for, and led them from experiment to hypothesis, 
anh from hypothesis to theory, and from theory to 
discovery, and from faith to sight; these also were 
the children of faith. 

And what shall I more say? For the time would 
fail me to tell of Stevenson and Fulton, of Morse 
also and Edison, and Roentgen and Lister, and 
Cyrus Field and Bell, of Marconi and Wilbur 
Wright, who through faith made iron float, yoked_ 
chariots to the invisible power of steam, caused the 
human voice to be heard across thousands of miles, 
brought the mind of man into touch with his fellow 
man beyond the sea, filled the air with voices inau- 
dible to the ear alone and intelligible only to faith, 
and lifted the bodies and minds of men on wings of 
wonder and set them to sailing amid the clouds. 

Through faith they built railroads, irrigated des- 
erts, and crossed the trackless ice to the poles, led 
by faith in the compass and the friendly stars. By 
faith they subdued climates, overcame hardships, 
out of weakness were made strong, added to the 
span of human life, wrought wonders incredible, 
and filled the world with the news of their achieve- 
ments that ceased to be wonderful through their 
incredible certitude. 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


Now they who do such things see visions of them 
before they come to pass, and thus are men of faith. 
And these all, and they who labored with them and 
before them, lived in faith, and those who died, died 
in faith, that all who follow may add their knowl- 
edge to that which is gone before, and the world by 
the gift of all men of faith at last shall be made 
perfect. 

Is there a life beyond the grave? ‘The man of 
sense and of sense alone, sees dust return to dust, 
and answers, “Death ends all.” But life itself 
makes a tremendous demand on the imagination. 
Our present life is strange and wonderful past all 
belief. It requires imagination to account for the 
present union of matter and spirit in these bodies 
of ours, for who understands it? And why should 
it be thought a thing incredible that God should 
raise the dead? 

And when we come to believe in heaven, we still 
have every appeal to the imagination in making our 
belief a motive in righteousness. So the Bible tells 
us in material figures a few things that furnish ma- 
terial for the imagination. The gates of pearl, the 
streets of gold, the ever-blooming flowers and the 

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Se 
AS 


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MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


trees bearing fruit all the year, the nightless day 
and the unending song—these are the rare ma- 
terials for the sanctified imagination, to help us to 
make real to the soul the things that “eye hath not 
seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the 
heart of man.” 

We walk by sight, but not wholly, for we walk 
by faith. And our appeal for clean streets, for 
righteous politics, for the uplifting of mankind and 
for the heaven that God hath prepared for them 
that love Him, as an appeal to that sanctified 
imagination which fruits in faith. 

So let us rejoice in the glory of the human mind, 
its power to know, its ability to love and rejoice and 
its creative strength of will. And with it all, let us 
cultivate that power of seeing the invisible, of form- 
ing and cherishing ideals, and of framing an im- 
pelling faith, through the enlightening influence of 
that great gift of God, which gives substance to 
things hoped for and affords evidence of things 
not seen. So shall we add our names to those who 
endure “‘as seeing Him who is invisible,” and share 
in the triumph of faith. 

And so I am ready to meet the pre 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


who asks if religion is not largely concerned with 
the imagination and admit to him that it is. But I 
also remind him that all his hope for the betterment 
of human life, and all his inspiration for the life 
that is to come, necessitate an appeal to the imagi- 
nation. And I will go further and say that no- 
where is that appeal more sane or practical than 
within the sphere of religion. Whether it be to 
make real my brother’s hunger to the practical end 
that he may share my loaf, or whether it be that the 
soul shall be elevated out of the weary round of the 
commonplace and find fellowship with the hosts 
immortal, the appeal is to the imagination. The 
glorious company of the apostles, the goodly fel- 
lowship of the prophets, the noble army of martyrs, 
these are the inspiring companions of the man with 
the sanctified imagination. On his ears fall the 
sweet melodies of the choir invisible, and his soli- 
tary race in the lonely arena is cheered by the ap- 
plause of the cloud of witnesses. And he endures 
“as seeing Him who is invisible.” 

Scientists are still discussing the conservation of 
energy. ‘They are not sure whether there is or is 
not such a thing as waste in the physical universe. 

131 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


We can afford to wait for their investigation with 
hearty interest in its result. Meantime, we are as- 
sured that much that seems waste is not really so. 
If fire consumes the wood, the whole mass of the 
original log can be accounted for in the weight of 
ashes and smoke and vapor; there is precisely as 
much matter in the world as there was before. 
HKinergy, also, is persistent in many, if not all cases, 
where it appeared to have been dissipated. If we 
were to add together that which the lightning flash 
displays in heat and light and rending power, we 
should be able to assert that all of it was still con- 
served in the sum total of creation’s forces. 

God holds matter cheap. Worlds are to Him 
as small dust in the balance, and He taketh up the 
isles as a very little thing. Force is not the most 
precious thing in God’s possession; his is the king- 
dom and the power; He can utilize the atomic ener- 
gy we vaguely grope after and speculate about. 
But character is God’s most precious product, and 
most like Himself. Will God cherish with miserly 
care his least valuable possessions and cast away 
what has cost Him Gethsemanes of struggle, Cal- 
varies of divine suffering? 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


Human reason cries out against this conception 
of a God parsimonious of his cheapest and waste- 
ful of his best. 

“What is most excellent, that, as God is God, is 
permanent.” 

The body of man reaches its limit in height and 
weight. This is a wise and necessary limitation; 
but no such restriction applies to man’s power to 
learn or to grow in goodness. 

One of the most easily understood reasons for 
immortality is the undying appetite of the soul for 
knowledge and for love. As we approach the 
limit of life, it never occurs to us that it is time to 
fold our arms, close our eyes, and bid farewell to 
nature, poetry, art and friendship. As long as our 
faculties permit, we take exactly the same interest 
in life that we would if we were to go on indefi- 
nitely. 

As we approach its physical limit we cease to 
harass ourselves or others much about mere 
questions of creed. A very few central truths 
satisfy us. ‘Trust in God, love to man, are enough. 
We cease to argue and to doubt, but we do not 
cease to learn. The mind is still alert and the spirit 

133 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


is eager for truth and righteousness. ne should 
that process not go on forever? 

Some good people have been concerned 1S the 
doctrine of evolution should furnish an argument 
against immortality. At what point in the ascent 
of man, they ask, did the soul enter into immortal 
relations with mortal life? That is a question 
which does not belong to the evolution of the race 
any more than it belongs to the evolution of each 
individual in the race. Hach person begins with a 
single cell and ascends in his pre-natal development 
through stages analogous to those of lower forms. 
We do not know at what point either in the life of 
the individual or the race the foetus becomes hu- 
man. Ina sense it was always human, both racial- 
ly and individually; in another sense it passes over 
from lower to higher stages of existence. The 
problem is not to find the line but to discover the 
significance of the fact. 

Reverent believers in evolution, those who see 
in it God’s way of working, have a new joy in its 
implications. “It means,” they say, “that God was 
always thinking of me.” It means that God’s in- 
terest in the ascent of life goes as far back as the 

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SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 


spiral nebulew, and then as much further into the 
unfathomable chaos. Still, God was there, and He 
was thinking of us. He saw the end from the be- 
ginning, and held this as the highest stage of evolu- 
tion, that man, his masterpiece, was to become 
capable of knowing God, being like God, and liv- 
ing eternally with God. 

We need not demand of modern science that it 
prove to us the fact of immortality, nor cry out 
against it as godless if it declares that it has made 
no such discovery and thinks that it can never do 
so. Personally, I question whether science as such 
holds this prerogative. But if science can not prove 
immortality neither can it disprove it, and there are 
many scientists who have no desire to undertake 
that task. Meantime, they have given us valued in- 
formation about this life. For this they have our 
thanks. And we have their good will, also, while 
we seek, in the fields where it may properly be 
found, the proof of life after death. 


CHAPTER IX 
PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


SCIENCE concerns itself with phenomena, and en- 
deavors to classify and explain the data of experi- 
ence in orderly fashion and in accord with fixed 
methods and reliable principles of cause and effect. 
Philosophy seeks the unification of all knowledge, 
and a rational synthesis of all the data of science. 
Philosophy is, by its etymology, the love of wisdom, 
but it is more than that. It is the attempt to make 
wisdom out of what, without her aid, might be mere 
knowledge. It might be expected or at least hoped 
that the philosophers would be better able than the 
scientists to give us a confident approach to a hope 
of life after death. The philosophers have not all 
agreed, but in the main they have treated the sub- 
ject with reverence and with profitable results. 

There occur to me seven ways in which people 
may interpret life. The first is: To say that any 

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PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


attempt to discriminate between good and evil is 
subjective; that we have no valid reason to believe 
that any such distinction exists in the world; that 
all things are equally good and equally pure in the 
universe at large; that a thing that is not good for 
one purpose is good for another, and that probably 
nothing is really good or evil at all; that the terms 
good and evil are only our attempt to superimpose 
our own subjective and variable judgments on a 
universe that is inherently non-ethical. That is the 
first way; to my mind an utterly inadequate at- 
tempt to account for life and the universe. 

The second theory holds that there may be good, 
and probably is; that there may be evil, and prob- 
ably is; at least there exist in the universe such cur- 
rents and counter-currents as seem to us to be good 
and evil; forces which we can not account for ex- 
cept by calling them so; but that to distinguish any 
moral purpose in the flux of things is utterly im- 
possible for us; that the forces do not simply coun- 
teract each other, but they are a confused mass of 
counter-currents, which may or may not come to 
an ethical result; and that they have no ultimate 
destination as far as we can see; so that while there 

137 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


is a possibility or even a probability of good and 
evil, those qualities exist, if they do exist, without 
discoverable ultimate purpose. 

The third is a dualistic philosophy. It affirms 
that there is good and there is evil, equally divided 
as day and night are equally divided, two perma- 
nent and opposing forces. One of the Chinese 
philosophies represents this doctrine graphically 
by a reverse curve carefully drawn through a circle, 
half of it light and half of it dark. You may draw 
through such a circle a diameter in any direction 
through the center, always half will be light and 
half will be dark. Some of the philosophies and 
some of the religions of the world, even some that 
call themselves Christian, are based essentially 
upon that fundamental hostility. ‘There are Chris- 
tians who so exalt the devil into a kind of negative 
God as logically to classify themselves in the cat- 
egory of dualists. 

The fourth is the philosophy of pure pessimism, 
which is to say that the evil in the world is so un- 
deniable, so present in even the best of what men 
call good, that the Creator (if there be one) is to 
be judged only by the world which He has made, 

138 





} 
‘ 
: 


— ee eee ee ee eee i ene Sa ee 


ee ee eee eee 


en ee ————— eee 


es a e, 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


and we can not know Him to be good or imagine 
Him to be other than malignant. Presumably the 
Creator is Just as good and just as bad as the world 
which He has made; and being so, He could not 
have made the world as bad as it is if He had not 
been fundamentally bad at heart. Whatever good 
there is, according to this theory, is Just enough to 
save us from suicide, and the Creator desires us to 
live that we may suffer a little longer. This is the 
philosophy of Schopenhauer, and of Nietzsche. 
This philosophy is growing in some sections of po- 
lite society. There is something to be said for it. 
To my mind there is just enough truth in it to 
emphasize its utter and infernal folly. 

The next is a complete antithesis of the one we 
have been considering. It holds that God is good 
and only good and eternally good and there can 
not enter into his life and into his purpose any 
conception of evil; and therefore the world is good 
and only good, and nothing in it can be anything 
else than good, and we are to deny that anything is 
evil or that evil could be. 

The sixth teaches that God is good and God 
always has been good, and God always will be good, 

139 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


but the world is bad, as bad at present as it can be; 
and probably getting worse. But if you ask how 
a good God could make a bad world, the answer is 
that it was made good and something happened to 
it; a snake got in, or the devil—into the garden, or 
into the heart of a man or a woman, one or both. In 
the beginning God made all good and something 
occurred to it to change it, and whether it now can 
be repaired is the problem of Theology. Some 
think it is getting better and some think it is get- 
ting worse, but the idea is of a perfect world in the 
beginning, the mirror of the mind of a perfect God, 
but a world which has met with some moral mishap. 

I shall not stop to speak of these six. Each has 
its stout defenders. All of them to my mind are 
inadequate. 

We come now to the last. It calls for the most 
faith of any, in that it calls for the most perfect 
vision of them all. It says that God is good, funda- 
mentally and eternally good, and that He has made 
a world, the bed rock of which is his own everlast- 
ing goodness; that the undeniable evil that is in it is 
somehow the expression of his goodness; that the 
world has never got away from Him; that God is 

140 


ee ae ES ee i, rte te So cnt 


Retr ae 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


still in the saddle; that God is still on the throne: 
God is still King of the world; that even the forces 
of evil and unrestraint are under his control, 
working out a more glorious form of his eternal 
goodness than the world has yet seen. That calls 
for no cheap and easy optimism. Over against the 
easier, cheaper forms which sing and trip along— 


God’s in his heaven 
All’s right in the world; 


this says, “God is working in his world, and all’s 
right with his heaven.” God made a good world, 
but a world that lacked the perfection of moral 
character, because character is the one good thing 
which God can not furnish ready made. ‘The world 
never has been perfect, but is working toward per- 
fection. 

There is only one religion that is brave enough 
to face all the facts of life, the bitter and the un- 
pleasant facts as well as the facts that are agreeable 
and readily intelligible. It is no cheap and easy 
optimism which we find in the Bible. It is an 
optimism which arrives at its basis of assurance 
through conflict; that discovers its certainty of 

141 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


divine love while looking squarely in the face of the 
contentions and sorrows of the world. 

Swift and violent are the reactions of the human 
mind in times such as these in which we now live, 
and great is the temptation to react toward some 
form of social or spiritual hysteria. Jiven desir-' 
able changes are liable to occur in undesirable 
ways, and truths neglected to spring up, bound 
hand and foot with the grave clothes of error. We 
are in a new era, not only in politics but in religion. 
It emerged from the chaos of war, and it 1s still 
without form and void, and darkness is upon the 
face of the deep. May the Spirit of God brood 
upon the waters, and bring to the world order, light 
and life. 

It is not strange that before the War, faith in im- 
mortality burned low in the socket. Our studies 
in science and religion had been almost wholly in 
other directions, and our philosophy had sought to 
discover whether it could not somehow modify the 
declaration of Novalis, that “Philosophy can bake 
us no bread; but she can procure for us God, free- 
dom and immortality.” The baking of bread had 
become a highly important vocation, and the quest 

142 





PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


for immortality a neglected pursuit. Philosophy 
had largely given place to psychology, and psychol- 
ogy was a cheap word in the mouth of the faker. 
Science had become nothing if not “comparative” 
and the religious disciplines nothing if not “‘social.”’ 
It is said that Agassiz introduced the new order of 
thinking into modern science in a single sentence 
in criticism of a new book which his associates at a 
scientific dinner were commending—‘The fatal 
error of the book is that while it is descriptive it is 
not comparative.” Descriptive works in natural 
science were thenceforth counted of value only as 
material for investigation. Comparative anatomy, 
comparative zoology, comparative psychology be- 
came the new order, and the word “comparative” 
ruled in all sciences dealing with life in any of its - 
forms. ‘The human hand, the human eye, the hu- 
man brain ceased to be studied as they had been 
studied in the days of Paley, as proofs of intelligent 
design on the part of an all-wise and all-good Cre- 
ator, and assumed their places in the catalogue of 
comparative forms of evolution, having common 
origins and diversified adaptations to environment. 
The hand, for instance, was no longer an argument 
143 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 
we 


in natural theology, showing the perfection of 
God’s work in man who was made in the image of 
God, but was an adaptation of a highly developed 
form of mammalian life, analogous in its essential 
anatomical parts to other developments of the 
quadruped type, and comparable, bone for bone, 
artery for artery, nerve for nerve, muscle for mus- 
cle, with the paw of the lion, the wing of the bird 
and the flipper of the whale, all of them variant 
forms of the same generic type. Even religion 
was no longer to be studied as if there were one 
true and many false religions, but all religions 
were to be recognized as the gropingss of the human 
mind after God, if haply they might find Him, 
_who was not far from every one of them. Com- 
parative religion became as essential as compara- 
tive anatomy. 

Moving in the other direction, religion had rushed 
with ardor into all manner of social experiment. 
The Gospel was discovered, not primarily as a 
preparation for death, but as a rule of life, and that 
life essentially social. A whole group of new 
sciences and philosophies sprang into being. We 
had for the first time social psychology, social 
: 144 


-= 


Tee 


a 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


ethics, and in a sense, a new social gospel. Wash- 
ington Gladden and Walter Rauschenbush did 
not live in vain. Rauschenbush was able before he 
died to see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied 
with the widespread preaching of the social Gospel 
for which earlier he had pleaded, to publish a book 
lamenting that that social Gospel had as yet no 
adequate theory, and to attempt himself to furnish 
the outlines of A Theology for the Social Gospel. 

Inevitably these studies, theological and scien- 
tific as well as philosophical, tended to a pragmatic 
adaptation of religion to the needs of the present 
life. “One world at a time” was almost enough for 
it. A man not much beyond middle age could say, 
as one did say: 

“In my childhood, the preaching was seventy- 
five per cent about hell, twenty per cent about 
heaven, and five per cent about this present life. 
Then came a time when it was seventy-five per 
cent about heaven, twenty per cent about hell, and 
the same old five per cent about this life. And now 
it is ninety per cent about this life, ten per cent 
about heaven, and hell is a back number.” 

His percentages may be open to dispute, but the 

145 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


shifting of emphasis had occurred within his per- 
sonal recollection. In 1916 Professor James H. 
Leuba of Bryn Mawr, published a book,* in which 
he set forth results of inquiries, among college stu- 
dents, scientists and men of standing in the literary 
world, but especially among the students of one 
college for women. It was found that only a mui- 
nority of those whom he had interrogated believed 
in personal immortality. He believed that faith 
had little practical value in the life of modern ed- 
ucated people. Holding, as he did, that the real 
ground for the continuance of this belief in a per- 
sonal God, was not the validity of the positive 
proofs, but the practical utility of the beliefs them- 
selves, he challenged the practical utility of the be- 
lief, and declared that the answer commonly given 
to the question of such utility was wholly uncon- 
vincing. 

Such were the straws that showed some currents 
of the wind when America entered the World War. 

Of the dimming of faith in immortality before 
the War, and of the way in which the War com- 
pelled the world to think of the fact of life and the 





*The Belief in God and Immortality: A Psychological, Anthro- 
pological and Statistical study. By James H. Leuba. Boston, 
Sherman, French & Company, 1916. 


146 





PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


mystery of death, Dean Inge, of Saint Paul’s in 
London, says: 


References to the future life had, before the 
War, become rare even in the pulpit. The topic was 
mainly reserved for letters of condolence and was 
then handled gingerly, as if it would not bear much 
pressure. Working-class audiences and congrega- 
tions listened eagerly to the wildest promises of an 
earthly Utopia the day after to-morrow, but cooled 
down at once when they were reminded that “‘if in 
this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all 
men most miserable.” Accordingly, the clerical 
demagogue showed more interest in the unem- 
ployed than in the unconverted. Christianity, 
which began as a revolutionary idealism, had sunk 
into heralding an apocalyptic revolution. Such 
teachers have no message of hope and comfort for 
those who have lost their dearest. And they have, 
in fact, been deserted. Their secularized Christian- 
ty was received with half-contemptuous approval 
by trade unions, but far deeper hopes, fears, and 
longings have been stirred, which concern all men 
and women alike, and on the answers to which the 
whole value of existence is now seen to depend. 
Christianity can answer them, but not the Churches 
through the mouths of their accredited representa- 
tives. And so, instead of “the blessed hope of ever- 
lasting life,” the bereaved have been driven to this 
pathetic and miserable substitute, the barbaric be- 
lief in ghosts and demons, which was old before 


147 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Christianity was young. And what a starveling 
hope it is that necromancy offers us! An existence 
as poor and unsubstantial as that of Homer’s 
Hades, which the shade of Achilles would have 
been glad to exchange for serfdom to the poorest 
farmer, and with no guarantee of permanence, even 
if the power of comforting or terrifying surviving 
relations is supposed to persist for a few years. 
Such a prospect would add a new terror to death; 
and none would desire it for himself. It is plainly 
the dream of an aching heart, which can not bear 
to be left alone.—Swurvival and Immortality in 
Hibbert Journal. 


The philosophers have not been able to set forth 
the facts of human life without taking account of 
man’s hope of immortality. They have sought to 
discover in the realm of pure thought and in the 
conditions of life, the basis which may exist for such 
a hope, and to a surprising extent they have given 
utterance to a firm faith in a life beyond the grave. 
We have no present purpose to attempt the merest 
outline of their approach to the subject. Volumes 
which deal with this aspect of their thinking are 
reasonably abundant. We may, however, refresh 
our memory with a glance at the method of reason- 
ing of some of the leading thinkers of ancient and 
of modern times. 

148 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


We begin with Plato, remembering that in his 
writings we have also the teaching of Socrates. 

Plato believed that the soul had existence before 
it entered the life of this world. His belief in a 
future life was Joined to a belief that life had 
passed through a previous existence. Plato held 
that immortality 1s not a doctrine for philosophy so 
much as it is for theology. He does however at- 
tempt an explanation. God, he says, is good, and 
free from all jealousy. He wants the largest pos- 
sible number of beings to share his perfection. 
Upon the beings thus created, God confers the 
eternity which of right belongs to Him alone. This 
is a very close approach to the Christian doctrine 
of God, “Who only hath immortality, dwelling in 
the light which no man can approach unto;” (I 
Timothy 6:16), but who has freely granted this 
quality of his own perfection to those whom He has 
made in his own image. 

To be sure, Plato does not always deal with the 
subject on this high level of assurance. In his 
Apology, his Phedo, his Republic and his Phe- 
drus he approached the question from different 
angles, and at times seemed to be less convinced by 

149 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


his own reasoning; but this only shows how many 
angles of approach this philosopher found and his 
effort to explore each avenue honestly to its own 
proper ending. 

The philosophy of Socrates has been considered 
in some respects agnostic. That term should not be 
accepted either in his case or in that of the men who 
in the beginning applied it to their own position as 
implying any degree of disinclination to believe. 
It was to him and to many of them the attitude of 
the open mind. When Socrates was condemned to 
death, he faced his judges and calmly accepted his 
sentence. In a brief and most memorable speech 
he said to them that, while they had not so intended 
it, they were doing him a kindness. If death was a 
dreamless sleep, as some supposed, that would 
bring him relief from many trials and cares, and 
crown a life which he was content to look back upon 
without regret. But he thought it possible that 
death was not a sleep, but a new life in Hades, in 
which event he would have opportunity to converse 
with Rhadamanthus and with the heroes and sages 
of all past ages. If death were but a sleep, his 
judges had done him a kindness; if it should prove 
indeed a new life, then great would be his gain. 

150 


—— a 


ie) 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


Calm in this assurance, he lived the thirty days 
that, under the unusual conditions of his sentence, 
he had to live, received his friends, conversed on 
high themes, refused all proposals made by his 
friends that would have enabled him to escape, and 
met death on the high plane of a serene confidence 
that all was well with him. 

Of modern philosophy, the fountain head is Im- 
manuel Kant. He did not regard immortality as 
proved by pure reason, but he reached assurance 
by what he called practical reason. He sought, as 
did Plato and Socrates, the summum bonum, or 
highest good for man. Flow is man to know that 
good and attain it? Man has in him conscience, 
which does not say, “This is desirable,” but ‘This is 
what you must do, or fail of your duty.” The char- 
acteristic of conscience is its assumption of au- 
thority, its categorical imperative. This conscience 
possessed by man is nothing more nor less than the 
indwelling life of God. It is of the nature of Rea- 
son, but it is in itself unreasonable, unless there 
is a God from whom it proceeds, and who will 
give opportunity for it to realize its fruition. But 
that opportunity can not be realized in a limited 
life such as we lead here. The God who has put 

15] 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


within us the expression of his own life in the cat- 
egorical imperative will provide adequate life for 
its realization. This is Kant’s argument in his own 
words: 


The realization of the swmmum bonum in the 
world is the necessary object of a will determinable 
by the moral law. But in this will the perfect ac- 
cordance of the mind with the moral law is the su- 
preme condition of the summum bonum. 'This 
then must be possible, as well as its object, since it 
is contained in the command to promote the latter. 
Now, the perfect accordance of the will with the 
~moral law is holiness, a perfection of which no ra- 
tional being of the sensible world is capable at any 
moment of his existence. Since, nevertheless, it is 
required as practically necessary, it can only be 
found in a progress in infinitum toward that per- 
fect accordance, and on the principles of pure 
practical reason it 1s necessary to assume such a 
practical progress as the real object of our will. 

Now, this endless progress is only possible on the — 
supposition of an endless duration of the existence 
and personality of the same rational being (which 
is called the immortality of the soul). ‘The sum- 
mum bonum, then, practically is only possible on 
the supposition of the immortality of the soul; con- 
sequently this immortality, being inseparably con- 
nected with the moral law, is a postulate of pure 
practical reason (by which J mean a theoretical 
proposition, not demonstrable as such, but which is 

152 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


an inseparable result of an unconditioned a priori 
practical law) .* 


And again: 


In the foregoing analysis the moral law led to a 
practical problem which is prescribed by pure rea- 
son alone, without the aid of any sensible motives, 
namely, that of the necessary completeness of the 
first and principal element of the swmmwm bonum, 
viz. Morality; and as this can be perfectly solved 
only in eternity, to the postulate of immortality. 
The same law must also lead us to affirm the pos- 
sibility of the second element of the swmmwim. bo- 
num, viz. Happiness proportioned to that morality, 
and this on grounds as disinterested as before, and 
solely from impartial reason; that is, it must lead 
to the supposition of the existence of a cause ad- 
equate to this effect; in other words, it must pos- 
tulate the Haistence of God, as the necessary 
condition of the possibility of the swmmum bonum 
(an object of the will which is necessarily connected 
with the moral legislation of pure reason). 

The postulate of the possibility of the highest 
derived good (the best world) is likewise the pos- 
tulate of the reality of a highest original good, that 
is to say, of the existence of God. Now it was seen 
to be a duty for us to promote the summum bonum; 
consequently it is not merely allowable, but it is a 
necessity connected with duty as a requisite, that 
we should presuppose the possibility of this swm- 
mum bonum; and as this is possible only on con- 





*Crit. of Pract. Reason, bk. ii. ch. ii, § iv., trans. Abbott. 
158 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


dition of the existence of God, it inseparably 
connects the supposition of this with duty; that 1s, 
it is morally necessary to assume the existence of 


God.* 

True philosophy is not content with an immor- 
tality which is survival and nothing more. It de- 
mands an immortality that gives full opportunity 
for the expression of the exuberance of human life. 
Of that life as here manifest, William James 


wrote: 


Man’s chief difference from the brutes lies in the 
exuberant excess of his subjective propensities— 
his preeminence over them simply and solely in the 
number and in the fantastic and unnecessary char- 
acter of his wants, physical, moral, esthetic, and 
intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest 
for the superfluous he would never have established 
himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the nec- 
essary. And from the consciousness of this he 
should draw the lesson that his wants are to be 
trusted; that even when their gratification seems 
farthest off, the uneasiness they occasion is still the 
best guide of his life and will lead him to issues 
entirely beyond his present powers of reckoning. 
Prune down his extravagance, sober him, and you 
undo him. ‘The appetite for immediate consistency 
at any cost, or what the logicians call the “law of 
parsimony’’—which is nothing but the passion for 
conceiving the universe in the most labor-saving 


*Ibid., 8 v. 
154 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


way—will, if made the exclusive law of the mind, 
end by blighting the development of the intellect 
itself quite as much as that of the feeling or the will. 
The scientific conception of the world as an army 
of molecules gratifies this appetite after its fashion 
most exquisitely. But if the religion of exclusive 
scientificism should ever succeed in suffocating all 
other appetites out of a nation’s mind, and imbuing 
a whole race with the persuasion that simplicity and 
consistency demand a tabula rasa to be made of 
every notion that does not form part of the soi- 
disant scientific synthesis, that nation, that race, 
will just as surely go to ruin and fall a prey to their 
more richly constituted neighbors, as the beasts of 
the field, as a whole, have fallen a prey to man. 


In the face of life’s stupendous mysteries, we can 
afford to be very modest in our affirmations, and 
charitable toward those who do not share our con- 
fidence. ‘loo often men have been condemned as 
atheists who were at the worst agnostics. They have 
suffered the opprobrium of harsh names when they 
should at least have been credited with honesty in 
refusing to affirm doctrines which, sometimes re- 
luctantly, they found themselves impelled to doubt. 
Faith in immortality is a precious possession to him 
who is able to afford it; but even more precious 
than faith is charity. No man having faith in im- 

155 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


mortality gains by that faith the right to be cen- 
sorious toward those who doubt. 

Even the doubters have their faith. None of us 
is consistent, least of all can those be consistent who 
deal in negations. Sooner or later hope rises above 
denial, and hope is akin to faith. 

I am not sure that we have any right to divide 
men into groups of believers and infidels. Some of 
those who believe have never had faith enough to 
nourish a doubt; and some of those who doubt 
might prompt the Lord to say, “I have not found 
so great faith, no not in Israel.” 

Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll was an orator, not a 
scholar; a poet rather than a philosopher. Yet he 
had what may be called his philosophy of the future 
life. Called to speak at the grave of his brother, 
and again at the grave of a friend, and still again 
at the grave of a little child, he uttered what was his 
personal creed, the right to hope for the best: 


_ “We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help 
for the living—Hope for the dead.” 


He did not pretend to know: 
“Every cradle asks us ‘Whence? and every cof- 


fin, “Whither? ‘The poor barbarian, weeping 
156 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


above his dead, can answer these questions just as 
well as the robed priest of the most authentic 
creed.” 


“In the presence of death, how beliefs and dog- 
mas wither and decay! How loving words and 
deeds burst into blossom! All wish for happiness 
beyond this life. All hope to meet again the loved 
and lost. In every heart there grows this sacred 
flower. Immortality is a word that Hope through 
all the ages has been whispering to Love. Let us 
believe that over the cradle Nature bends and 
smiles, and lovingly above the dead in benediction 
holds her outstretched hands.” 


“Life is a narrow vale between the cold and bar- 
ren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to 
look beyond the heights. We cry aloud, and the 
only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From 
the voiceless lips of our unreplying dead there 
comes no word; but in the night of death Hope 
sees a star, and listening Love can hear the rustle 
of a wing.” 


These are sentences quoted from his addresses at 
the grave. Shall we say that under stress of emo- 
tion he contradicted the negations of his own 
creed? It would not be fair thus to accuse him. 
Rather it would be more true to say that he him- 
self did not regard these hopes based on love as a 

157 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


denial of his every day creed. He did not know, 
but he hoped. 

Of a friend who died, sharing his doubt and 
faith, he said: 


“Fe lived for this world: if there be another, he 
will live for that.” 


He maintained that we do not know whether 
death is a wall or a door; the beginning or the end 
of a day; the folding forever of wings, or the 
spreading of pinions to soar; the rise or set of a 
sun; the quiet end of life or the beginning of an 
endless life that brings the rapture of love. Of 
this he was sure, that immortality must be more 
than a continuity of life: it must bring recognition 
and love: 


“TY had rather live and love where death is king 
than have eternal life where love is not. Another 
life is naught unless we know and love again the 
ones who love us here.” 


But he would not live on negations: 


“Whatever flower of hope springs in my heart I 
will cherish; I will give it breath of sighs and rain 
of tears.” 

158 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


When he was told that he had been accused of 
attempting to destroy men’s faith in immortality, 
he denied it. Immortality, he said, was a hope that 
no man could destroy, and he had no desire to de- 
stroy it: it was a hope that sprang from Love and 
would persist so long as Love reached out its hand 
and held to the cold hand of Death. But are we to 
meet and know our loved ones? 

“Reason says, ‘Perhaps,’ and Hope whispers, 
“Yes; 

There is a sense in which we are all philosophers | 
by compulsion. We can not restrain ourselves 
from asking the reasons for things and seeking to 
unify our little broken knowledge. 

If a man were to spend his life beside the Ni- 
agara River and had little knowledge of geography 
or natural science, but was possessed of reasonable 
intelligence, he would find himself continually 
meditating about the river whose waters were flow- 
ing past him, by day and by night, and would ask 
himself, “Where does this water come from, and 
where does it go to?’ He would observe that the 
stream flowed ever in one direction; that it never 
reversed its current; that it flowed gently at the 
upper_end of the short stream, but gathered mo- 

159 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


mentum, and moved more and more swiftly, until 
at last with terrific speed it plunged over the edge 
of the chasm, to be lost below in the whirlpool and 
swallowed up in a vast mystery. 

He would sometimes ask himself, “Is there any 
power on earth that can lift those waters up again 
to their former level above the Falls?’ He would 
be very likely to answer that there can be no such 
power. He could hardly be expected to think oth- 
erwise. He could see nothing, understand nothing, 
to justify any other opinion. The water flowed 
down from an unknown source, running faster and 
faster, until at last it disappeared over the Falls, 
and that was virtually the end of it. It flowed on 
to unseen mysteries, but it came back never. He 
might even come to see a certain fascination in it, 
think it a desirable arrangement, and lose all wish 
to have it otherwise. 

But even as he looked, the water would be ris- 
ing. He could not see it or understand it, but the 
very mist into which the falling water was dashed, 
would be the beginning of its elevation. And if he 
could but know it, the silent power of the sun play- 
ing upon it was able to lift it up, not simply to its 

160 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


former level at the brink of the chasm, but higher 
than the river, higher than the lake above the river, 
up and up, into the very sky, where rainbows would 
play through it, and the sunlight find joy in its 
companionship. And in time, it would be sent on 
fresh ministries, unending opportunities of service. 

We live on the banks of such a stream. Its wa- 
ters flow ever in one direction. ‘They go faster and 
faster as the years multiply, and they take a plunge 
which carries them from our sight. ‘That river is 
the stream of human life. We may not sit upon its 
banks, for we flow with it and are a part of it; but 
we are able to see the direction of its current and to 
witness the plunge before we ourselves take it. We 
are compelled to ask ourselves again and again, 
What is the source of life, and what is its destiny? 

It is not strange that our first answer should be 
that death ends all. It is not to be wondered that 
we see no great distance down the gorge or beyond 
the whirlpool. The wonder is that we see as much 
as we do, or that we possess as much faith as we 
know ourselves to have. 

But the power of God that lifts the water out of 
the cataract, out of the whirlpool, out of the very 

161 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


ocean, and sends it, purified and illumined, on other 
ministries, is capable of lifting human life out of 
the grave, and giving to it new opportunity, new 
service, new light and life. 

A rational hope of immortality involves the sur- 
vival of personality and the continued existence of 
personal identity. There will be recognition of 
loved ones, and a permanence of social relation- 
ships. We shall not be impersonal units in a celes- 
tial mob, and our friends will not be lost to us in 
the unnumbered and unidentified multitude. 

Let us carry this thought further in the relation 
of this present life to the life to come. I shall not 
lead you into any of those fantastic, and to my 
mind, unworthy imaginings which of late have be- 
come common; neither shall we go wholly into the 
realm of speculative theology. I am proposing to 
outline my own approach to a study of this subject. 
I do not claim that this line of thought is original 
with me; it is in essential accord with that set forth 
by the eminent physician of three hundred years 
ago, Sir Thomas Browne. It is also that which 
was developed by Gustav Theodor Fechner who 
was not a theologian but whose province was 


162 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


physics and psychology. His work in cosmogony 
and in the study of electrical energy and the va- 
lidity of the atomic theory has made him an au- 
thority in those departments of research. He was 
also a very direct and practical philosopher. 

Following a line of thought parallel with Fech- 
ner, and in places essentially the same as his, I give 
my own confession of faith in terms of a phil- 
osophic interpretation of life and hope. 

We live, in this life of which our conscious earth- 
experience is a part, not once, but certainly twice, 
and I rather think three times. We are living now, 
and we know it. We have lived previously, and we 
just as certainly know that, and we have what I be- 
lieve are valid hopes for a life to come. 

Compare for a few moments the life we now have 
with that which we know we formerly possessed. 
We need not go into those fine and suggestive un- 
certainties so beautifully set forth by Wordsworth: 


Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
_ 'The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
Hath elsewhere had its setting, 
And cometh from afar. 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 
And not in utter nakedness, 


163 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


But trailing clouds of glory, do we come 
From God, who is our home! 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy. 


Such thoughts move us profoundly by their 
beauty and suggestiveness. We seek to fathom our 
own souls, and look deep into the eyes of children 
to discover if they may be true. 

But we are to keep close to the simple facts as we 
know them, and we say, The life that we are now 
living is part and parcel of a life which had a pre- 
vious existence, and we know it. We are to think 
for a few minutes about that previous life of 
ours, that it may provide us whatever suggestions 
it affords of another life. 

Every one who now is here lived on earth before. 
We lived lives that are plainly continued in this 
life, lives for which that form of life was a prepara- 
tion. For the space of some ten lunar months each 
one of us lived in that previous state. Now, for 
varying periods—in some instances as many as 
three score years and ten—we have lived some- 
what as we now are living. 

In the first stage, man lives alone in the dark- 
ness; in the second, he lives in association with com- 

164 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


panions and friends; in the third stage he is to live 
in a higher social sphere, in which we shall know 
perfectly, even as we are known, and discern ulti- 
mate verities. 

Our previous life was a continuous sleep; our 
present life alternates between sleeping and wak- 
ing; the coming stage of our life will be of ever- 
lasting consciousness. 

The function of the first stage was to prepare a 
body and brain suited to the second stage; and the 
function of the second is to develop a character 
fitted for the third. 

Now, in the first stage, we had eyes that never 
opened, and which, if they had opened, could have 
seen nothing; but those eyes that were formed in 
darkness were formed for the light. In the first 
stage we had ears that never heard a sound, but 
though formed in the silence, they were made for 
hearing. All the light of the seven colors of the 
spectrum, all the sounds and chords of the octave, 
were created for eyes and ears that were made in 
darkness and silence. 

It seems to me quite impossible that the little un- 
born child should have any premonition of the pur- 

165 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


pose for which it is living and is to live; but if we 
could imagine it to be possible that through the 
telepathy of love the little life might ask of its 
mother, “Are these parts of me which have no pres- 
ent use made for any use hereafter?” the mother 
would whisper, “Yes, my dear little one, your eyes 
are forming to behold beautiful things, and your 
ears are so created as to enjoy rich harmonies, and 
your tiny hands and feet are for a world where you 
can use and enjoy them and do useful things with 
them; and if I can not tell you everything that you 
would like to know, believe the best that you pos- 
sibly can believe; it is all true, and more.” 

There are two transitions from one to another of 
these three stages of our life. Both are through 
darkness and pain. The first of them we call birth; 
the other we call death. As we could not ad- 
equately interpret the first before our birth, so 
neither can we fully understand that the darkness 
and pain of death are the way to light and joy, but 
it is true. 

To what extent is it true that life is continuous 
through all these stages? The body which we now 
have is the same body that we had before we were 
born, taller and larger and modified by growth and 

166 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


contact with the world, but the same. Are we to! 
believe in the resurrection of the body? 

The ancient creeds say, “I believe in the resur- 
rection of the body.” Personally, I prefer nct to 
be asked to express my own faith in those precise 
words. I should prefer that whatever creeds I am 
asked to recite should be formulated as nearly as 
may be in terms of the thought of my own gen- 
eration. But this may not always be. If we are to 
recite our faith in unison with other Christians we 
must be allowed all reasonable elasticity in the use 
of words. The makers of the old creeds knew no 
possibility of personal survival apart from the 
body. When they said, “I believe in the resurrec- 
tion of the body,” they meant, “I believe in the sur- 
vival of personal identity.” If I find myself in a 
congregation which is using such a creed I do not 
forbear to recite the words with them, but I believe, 
and I think they also believe, in general, what the 
makers of the creed meant, the survival of per- 
sonality. 

As to the survival of the physical body, let us 
employ an illustration which seems to me sug- 
gestive. 

It is not quite true that the body which we now 

167 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


have is identical in its parts with what constituted 
the body of the unborn child. In the embryonic 
period it was only a part of his body, and in the 
early stages of life, a minor part. The other part 
enveloped it, and gave it life. The two developed 
together, and the two were born together. But 
they were soon separated, and the part that had 
been so useful was discarded immediately as being 
no longer of use. No one cared very much what 
became of that discarded envelope that had _ be- 
longed to the body. It was buried soon and with- 
out grief. No one ever desired that it should 
return to cumber a body which it had once sup- 
ported but which had become capable of indepen- 
dent existence. 

Now, I suppose that if the unborn child could be 
told that as soon as it was born its body would be 
cut in two and one part discarded and buried, never 
to rise again, the little infant mind would be 
stricken with terror. How could it possibly live 
without that part of its being which it had always 
possessed, and which had furnished it its very life 
blood and sustenance? The little mind might even 
try to formulate a foolish creed affirming its belief 

168 


PHILOSOPHY AND FAITH 


in the permanent survival of all that it regarded as 
its body, all that it had found essential to its life and 
well-being. I suppose we are not much more capa- 
ble of making wise creeds that dogmatize about the 
relations of this physical body to the spiritual life. 
It is enough for us to know that personality will 
survive, and will evolve for its spiritual uses an or- 
ganism suited to its continued life. 

I think of this present wonderful body of ‘ours as 
a kind of placenta for the spiritual organism that 
shall relate itself to our spiritual life and express 
our spiritual nature in the world to come. I do not 
despise these beautiful bodies of ours, but I like to 
think that our spiritual life is capable of develop- 
ing for its expression an organism as well adapted 
to its future existence as this one is to our present 
existence. This present body is but the placenta of 
the spiritual organism that is to be. 

The immortality which the best of our philoso- 
phers teach is an immortality which recognizes the 
unlimited capacity of the human soul for growth; 
its capacity for joy, for love, for goodness. It 
gives us not life, merely, but life more abundant. 

We can not claim that philosophy has given to us 

169 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


a demonstration of immortality; that would be too 
much to ask; but it does give to us the assurance 
that faith in immortality is reasonable, as judged 
by the tests of sound and sane thinking. It enables 
us to go back over the history of human thought 
and say with Addison: 


It must be so—P lato, thou reasonest well— 
Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
This longing after immortality ? 

Or whence this secret dread, and inward horror, 
Of falling into naught? Why shrinks the soul 
Back on herself and startles at destruction? 

Tis the divinity that stirs within us; 
"Tis Heaven itself that points out an hereafter 
And intimates Eternity to man. 


CHAPTER X 
IMMORTALITY IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 


CONSIDERING that some of the fathers of the Jew- 
ish nation lived in Egypt, and that Egypt was 
never far away from their place of sojourn, it is 
nothing less than remarkable that the Old Testa- 
ment contains so little about immortality. The Tel 
el-Amarna letters show us that in the centuries al- 
most immediately preceding the occupancy of 
Palestine by the people of Israel, that land was 
ruled by Egypt: it is strange that Egyptian re- 
ligion left there no notable mark of its own faith in 
the survival of the soul. 

Let us see if we can find immortality in the Old 
Testament. 

The doctrine of personal immortality is not 
taught in the Law of Moses. 

The doctrine of life after death is not taught in 
the prophets. When Isaiah, greatest of all the 

171 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


prophets, went to see Hezekiah, who was sick, he 

had no message of everlasting life with which to 

comfort him. And when Hezekiah later recorded 

the prayer he made to God, and which God heard 

for his recovery, it was a prayer which contained a 

distinct denial of immortality. 

For the grave can not praise thee, death can not 
celebrate thee: 

They that go down into the pit can not hope for thy 
truth. 

The living, the living; he shall praise thee, as I do 
this day: 

The father to the children shall make known thy 
truth.—lIsaiah 38 :18-20. 


For a long time the doctrine held was that a man 
was to survive in his posterity, or in his nation. It 
was believed that the righteous were to prosper in 
health and wealth, and the wicked to be punished 
with adversity during their life. 

But there are two great skeptical books which 
deny this doctrine and through their doubt come to 
a vague affirmation of immortality. One of these 
is Keclesiastes, which first denies that there is any 
difference between the fate of the good and the 
bad, between man and the brute; but at length 

172 


IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 


comes out of this pessimism into a conviction that 
a man should remember his Creator in youth, be- 
fore such pessimism comes to him, and that when 
the dust returns to the earth as it was, the spirit 
shall return to God who gave it. 

There is dim light in the other great book of 
doubt and faith, the book of Job. Job’s friends 
defend the traditional theology, which asserts that 
God rewards the just and punishes the evil in this 
life, and Job knows that is not true in his case. So 
he affirms that if this is God’s method, God is mak- 
ing a mistake in this particular instance, and he ap- 
peals to the God back of his god, from god to God, 
from the god of phenomena to the God of justice 
and truth; from the god “who hath taken away my 
right” to the God who is next of kin to an honest 
man. At first he has no faith in immortality, nor 
in the divine justice. 

He declares that his friends are wrong when they 
assert that God prospers good men and brings bad 
men to naught, for the tents of robbers prosper, 
and the good man is made a laughing-stock. And 
neither he nor his friends have any faith in a here- 
after save one in which souls shall live in a low 

173 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


subconscious state, the good and the evil and the 
untimely born together, in unconsciousness of each 
other, even of those nearest to them, while they suf- 
fer little and scarcely realize pain. 

Daniel, which is a very late book, and one which 
the Hebrews never reckoned among the prophets, 
has this affirmation: 

And many of them that sleep in the dust of the 
earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and 
some to shame and everlasting contempt.—Daniel 
12:2. 

This is perhaps the clearest passage in the Old 
Testament, and the only one with a distinct mes- 
sage of retribution for evil. But this is very late. 

The Psalms seem to deny and then to affirm im- 
mortality. They are the work of many authors, 
covering several centuries in their composition. 
Psalm vi is the song of a sick man, a pathetic cry 
of pain, pleading with God for recovery. It says: 


For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in 
the grave who shall give thee thanks?—Psalm 6:5. 
Psalm xxx is a song of praise for recovery, 
probably by the same writer, and expresses the 
same measure of faith: 
174 





IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 


I cried to thee, O Lord; and unto the Lord I 
made supplication. What profit is there in my 
blood, when I go down to the pit? Shall the dust 
praise thee? Shall it declare thy truth?—Psalm 
30 :8-9. 

Even as late as the Exile some singers of Israel 
have no hope of life after death. One of them cries 
out to God to save his people from the captivity be- 
fore they all die in Babylon, and go to where God 
forgets people: 


Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? Shall the 
dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy loving kind- 
ness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in 
destruction’—Psalm 88:10-11. 


But two earlier Psalms have a clearer faith. One 


of the authors has his lines cast in pleasant places 
and is sure that God’s goodness will continue: 


Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory re- 
joiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope. 

For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither 
wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. 

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy pres- 
ence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are 
pleasures for evermore.—Psalm 16:9-11. 


The other singer is in sorrow and oppression, his 
lot in striking contrast with that of the wicked, who 
175 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


have plenty for themselves and much to leave to 
their abundant posterity. But this Psalmist says: 


From men which are thy hand, O Lord, from 
men of the world, which have their portion in this 
life, and whose belly thou fillest with thy hid treas- 
ure: they are full of children, and leave the rest of 
their substance to their babes. 

As for me, I will behold thy face in righteous- 
ness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy 
likeness.—Psalm 17 :14-15. 


Hegel, in his notable posthumus work on the 
Philosophy of Religion, said: 


They (the Jews) did not believe in immortality, 
for even though it is perhaps possible to point to 
certain traces of belief in it, still those passages in 
which they occur are always of a very general char- 
acter, and had not the slightest influence on the re- 
ligious and moral points of view from which things 
were regarded. ‘The Ramla of the soul is not 
yet an admitted truth. 


Professor A. B. Davidson a noted English Old 
Testament scholar, said: 


If . . . we find explicit teaching on this ques- 
tion of immortality postponed, we may infer that 
it was not unnatural that it should be so, that there 
was something in the ways of thinking of the peo- 


*Vol. Il, p. 213. 





176 


IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 


ple which, for a time at least, supplied the place 
of it, or at all events made it not a necessity to a 
true life with God.* 


Reverend C. J. Wright, in a thoughtful article 
in the Homiletic Review, said: 


No one should be surprised to find that the Old 
Testament contains no speculation as to the pre- 
existence of souls or of metempsychosis. But very 
many are surprised, when they come to study care- 
fully the teaching of the Old Testament on the 
subject of the future, to find how vague and in- 
definite that teaching is, how very slightly em- 
phasized. Here may we say that we are speaking 
of the eschatology of the individual, and not of the 
eschatology of the people. ‘The former question 
is tantamount to that of the doctrine of immortali- 
ty, the latter to that of the kingdom of God upon 
earth. The obscurity of our subject as exhibited 
in the Old Testament is at once acknowledged by 
all who make it their business to study the question, 
and the acknowledgment gives rise to many ques- 
tions. It has been concluded, for example, that the 
revelation of the truth was kept back by God from 
his people for certain definite reasons—there may 
have been danger, for instance, in such a doctrine 
to the Jews. On this point it has to be remembered 
that there can be an immoral eschatology; the his- 
tory of ancient Kgyptian religion on this matter is 





*Biblical and Literary Essays, p. 278, 
177 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


at once significant. But attempts at explanation 
such as this, while no doubt containing ideas that. 
have kernels of truth within them, seem to conceive 
of revelation in a more artificial manner than the 
history of religions warrants. 


To the Jew, the idea of personality which we 
possess was more or less intangible. He had not 
much regard for individual life; he lived in his fam- 
ily, his tribe, his nation. “Thou shalt love thy clans- 
man as thyself’? was the second article in the law 
for him. ‘The Jew did not think so much of his per- 
sonal future as of the future of his family. 

But he had his own idea of personality. It was 
not of the soul as distinct from the body: all his ex- 
pressions of intellectual and emotional activity 
were assigned by him to some physical organ, the 
heart, the reins, the bowels. The body was as es- 
sential to life, present and prospective, as was any 
conception which he may have had of the soul. 
There was no duality between the two in the men 
who wrote the Old Testament. 

We are disposed to relegate rewards and pun- 
ishments to a future life. Not so the Jew. The 
book of Proverbs correctly sets forth the Jewish 


178 


IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 


idea that righteousness produces prosperity, and 
sin brings present and temporal disaster. 

The book of Job is written to confute this prev- 
alent idea. It grew out of the conflict between 
traditional theology and the stern facts of experi- 
ence. 

But if the Jew was not a believer in personal im- 
mortality neither did he believe in annihilation. He 
believed that at death all human lives continued in 
a place called “Sheol.” This word occurs some 
sixty-five times in the Old Testament. The picture 
presented by it is so gloomy that the authorized ver- 
sion commonly translated it “hell.” But it was not 
a place of punishment of the evil as contrasted with 
the reward of the good. A few times where this 
translation was impossible they gave it the render- 
ing “grave” or “pit.” The essential thing to re- 
member about it is that all souls went there without 
moral distinction. It was a shadowy place, where 
individual lives continued a kind of existence. 
It was a place prepared as a “house of meeting 
for all living.” (Job 80:23). It is “a land of 
darkness and of the shadow of death, without any 
order, and where the light is as darkness.” (Job 

179 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


10:21-22.) It is a place of low consciousness, with 
little perception of what is happening elsewhere, a 
place of dull pain and of twilight of the senses. Of 
the man who is in that place Job said: 


His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; 

And they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not 
of them. 

Only for himself his flesh hath pain, 

And for himself his soul mourneth.—Job 14:21-22. 


Sheol is a place without any moral quality. It 
was conceived by the Jews as a place where there 
was bare consciousness and perpetual gloom, but 
not a place of punishment for sin. 

The Preacher says: ‘The living know that they 
shall die, but the dead know not anything, neither 
have they any more a reward. Neither have they 
any more a portion forever in anything that is done 
under the sun.” — (Eccl. 9:5-6.) Job in one of the 
most despairing passages in the Old Testament 
says: “There is hope of a tree if it be cut down, 
that it will sprout again, and that the tender 
branch thereof will not cease . . . But man 
dieth and wasteth away. Yea, man giveth up the 

180 


IN THE OLD TESTAMENT 


ghost and where is he? As the waters fail from the 
sea, and the river decayeth and drieth up, so man 
lieth down and riseth not. ‘Till the heavens be no 
more, they shall not awake, nor be roused out of 
their sleep.” (Job 14:7-12.) What gave Sheol 
its acutest sting was that there the relations with 
God were cut off. So the Psalmist cries (6:5), “In 
death there is no remembrance of thee, In Sheol 
who shall give thee thanks?’ (Psalm 6:5.) 

Faith in immortality did not come into the Old 
Testament till some of its inspired writers passed 
through experiences, personal and national, which 
showed them the inadequacy of the doctrine they 
had been holding. The righteous did not always 
prosper. Misfortune was not always caused by the 
sin of the man who suffered it. If God was to deal 
justly with men, there must be another world in 
which He could right the wrongsof this. And so, 
some of them came to believe in a life beyond death. 

Jewish thought rose to a conception of the maj- 
esty and eternity of God which sometimes swept 
into its deep current a faith in the eternity of man. 
Habakkuk cried out: 

“Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, 

181 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


mine Holy One? we shall not die.” ‘This would al- 
most seem to identify the believer with God, in his 
possession of immortality. 

There are a few more passages, a very few, and 
they are of less importance and less clear meaning. 
Do they afford us faith in immortality? Yes, a dim 
hope. In them we think we have eternal life. We 
have a mighty and increasing hope for the Christ. 
We can find that prophetic hope there without 
question. In the New Testament we find the 
Christ himself. And in Him we have, we do not 
think we have, we have eternal life. 


CHAPTER XI 
IMMORTALITY IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 


THE faith which dimly glows in the Old Testa- 
ment breaks forth in the New ‘Testament into 
luminous truth. Jesus himself is the light that il- 
lumines the sacred Scriptures of the New Cove- 
nant. 

Jesus recognized that the Old Testament hope 
of immortality was not very bright. He said to the 
Jews who were ardent students of the Old Testa- 
ment, but rejected Him, that it was in Him and 
not in the letter of the older scriptures that their 
hope of immortality was to find its assurance. He 
said, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think 
ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify 
of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might 
have life.” 

We utterly miss the force of these words when 
we endeavor to strain them into an injunction to 

183 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


read the Bible. The Bible had no readers so dili- 
gent as those whom Jesus was addressing. Nomen 
on earth had so little need to be told “search the 
scriptures.” They did nothing else. And we do 
not need this verse as such admonition, for we have 
it elsewhere. But we do need the passage in its 
true meaning. 

Jesus stated as a matter of fact that the men 
whom he addressed searched the scriptures. He 
neither commanded it nor commended it. He cer- 
tainly did not reprove it, but He said that in this 
particular instance the searching of the scriptures 
was not yielding profitable results. 

Prophecy, the living voice of aspiration and 
faith, was dead. ‘The scribes, who had done so 
much to preserve the scriptures, were halting their 
inquiry ito truth where the prophets left off 
speaking. Jesus told the Jews why they searched 
the scriptures. It was because in them they thought 
they found eternal life. One sect of the Jewish 
teachers, the Pharisees, thought they found eternal 
life in the Old Testament; another, the Sadducees, 
denied it. But Jesus declared that He himself was 
the life they sought. 

184 


IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 


The New Testament doctrine of immortality 
rests securely on the conviction that this world was 
created and is governed by a wise and good God. 
The spirit and character of that God, we discern 
in Jesus Christ. In Him some men discover a rey- 
elation of what God is like, and others find in Him 
a suggestion of what man may become. I waste 
no time in discussing the divinity and humanity of 
Christ. Of this I am sure: I need both aspects of 
his character. I want to be sure that God is the 
kind of God whose human coefficient we have in 
Jesus. Also I want to be sure that the character of 
Jesus is revealed to me, not for my eternal discom- 
fiture, not to condemn me because I can never 
hope to be like Him, but for my comfort and en- 
couragement. I believe that we can be like Him. 
I believe that this is the essential truth of what St. 
Paul called the Gospel—that the life of God, 
which was lived humanly by Jesus of Nazareth, 
can be lived divinely by those who find God in 
Him. 

If that is true, then any good thing may be 
true. If God is our heavenly Father, and Jesus 
Christ is the human expression of the character of 

185 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


God and of his attitude toward man, then the only 
limit of what we may attain is to be found in the 
limitations which we impose upon ourselves. God 
has made us in his own image. He has sent our 
Lord Christ to reveal to us the moral and spiritual 
implications of that relationship. If God is really 
our Father, then there is nothing too good to be 
TEUey 

I do not wonder that the hope of immortality is 
a hope and not a demonstration. I wonder that 
so vast and all but incredible a hope should ever 
have suggested itself or been suggested to us. 

But we have such hope, an ineradicable, an 
indefeasible hope. And if God is good, it is not 
an unreasonable hope. It is a hope to be examined 
in the light of our conviction that we live under the 
rulership of a God whose moral attributes and 
whose attitude toward humanity we are discov- 
ering in Jesus Christ. On the basis of our convic- 
tion that we have such a God, our faith in immor- 
tality is as reasonable as it is persistent. 

There are some utterances of Jesus on this sub- 
ject which seem to me to be in themselves vast reve- 
lations of what it is reasonable for us to hope and 

186 


IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 


believe. ‘Take, for instance, those words which he 
addressed to his disciples in the Upper Room, 
when, speaking of life after death, He said: “If 
it were not so, I would have told you.”— 
John 14:2, 

I am inclined to think that we ought to consider 
these words as among the most precious of all the 
utterances of Jesus. ‘They are our assurance of the 
validity of all our most cherished hopes for the life 
to come; they are the guarantee of our right to be- 
lieve all that is best and most beautiful concerning 
our loved ones on the other side. 

Jesus had never previously conversed with his 
disciples on this high theme, yet He assumed that 
most wonderful things concerning it were or rea- 
sonably might be already believed by them, and He 
declared that these were true. It was as if He said, 
“Of course such fine things must be true; it could 
not be otherwise. You should know that without 
my telling you.” It gives us added reason to be- 
lieve that every beautiful thing we think about 
Heaven is either true or the suggestion of a truth 
more beautiful. It confirms us in the faith that all 
our best endeavors to know about the life to come 

187 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


are founded upon a valid impulse of the human 
heart. God has not given us these hopes in order 
to deceive us. The best that we can think is either 
true or a suggestion of a truth which is better than 
our thought. We question, we wonder, we doubt, 
and we express a hesitating faith. “Lord, 1s this 
true?” “Certainly it is true,” says the spirit of this 
declaration. “If it were not so, I would have told 
you.” Jesus would not have permitted us to be 
deceived about anything so important as this. ‘The 
broken heart of humanity cries out for immor- 
tality, and wants to know whether this is a thing 
too great for us to ask of God. Jesus says that we 
are permitted to believe in immortality, and that 
that belief is a true belief. “If it were not so, I 
would have told you.” 

The principle underlying this affirmation goes 
much further than we shall attempt to discover in 
this chapter. It reminds us that the words of Jesus 
are to be interpreted more liberally than some peo- 
ple suppose. There are many things desirable for 
us to know which the Bible does not in so many 
words tell us. ‘There were many problems con- 
fronting the early Church on which Jesus left no 

188 


IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 


specific direction. He did not, so far as we know, 
leave with his disciples any explicit directions as to 
the form of organization of the Church, nor any 
command as to the change of the Sabbath from the 
seventh to the first day of the week, nor did He 
indicate in definite terms what reforms Christian 
men ought in any particular age to champion. 
Jesus was not a law-giver but a life-giver. He came 
that men might have hfe, and live it out in terms 
of all the best possible in the successive ages in 
which they were to live. We may search the Bible 
in vain for a verse that tells us that this is the day 
or year in which Christian men ought to engage in 
a particular enterprise or support a particular re- 
form, but the Spirit of Jesus is with us to say, “Of 
course you should do this good thing; if it were not 
so, I would have told you.” I do not like to say 
that Jesus has left us to work these problems out 
for ourselves, because that is not what I believe. 
He has not left us. His spirit is still with us to 
guide us in all matters which are vital to the prog- 
ress of the work of Christ in the world. 

I mention these matters only as a passing sug- 
gestion, and I shall not return to them. They il- 

189 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


lustrate in what and how many interesting direc- 
tions a verse like this might carry us. But I think 
it profoundly significant in its assurance of the 
fact and the character of immortality. 

When [I think of immortality, 1 remember the 
old Greek story of Prometheus, who snatched the 
thunderbolt from the hand of Jove that he might 
bestow upon humanity the priceless boon of fire. 
Verily, faith in immortality is nothing less than 
Promethean. It is as if mortal man, conceiving of 
immortality as part of the inherent life of God, had 
risen to the very steps of the Throne and demanded 
that so good a thing should not remain a divine 
monopoly, but that God should share it with his 
children. | 

If God is infinite, immortality is certainly not 
impossible; and if God is good and human immor- 
tality is really good for the moral universe, it cer- 
tainly is not improbable. 

The supreme contribution which the New Testa- 
ment makes to the question of immortality is the 
person of Jesus Christ. “In Him was life; and the 
life.-was the light of men.” He came that men 
might have life and have it more abundantly. -He 

190 


IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 


died. What became of the material body of Jesus 
is not our chief concern, though no satisfactory ex- 
planation has been given of its disappearance. The 
tomb was empty of his body, and earth was thrilled 
with new life in his living presence. St. Paul said 
that he rose from the dead because it was not possi- 
ble for death to hold Him. It would indeed appear 
a most astounding conclusion of such a life as that 
of Jesus if He had perished as a criminal and that 
had been the end, Life from the dead was for Him 
inevitable. 

But “because He lives, we shall live also.” Jesus 
tasted death for every man, that all who come to 
the possession of life through Him may not be ob- 
literated by the incident of death. Our life is in 
Christ. 

There is continuity of life in Him. Life is con- 
tinuous in God, and in those who share God’s life. 
It is a present and abiding possession. “On either 
side of the river was there the tree of life.” It 
blooms and fruits both now and hereafter. 

I had occasion to make a journey to California. 
I was returning homeward, and ascending the 
Rocky Mountains near the roof of the Continent. 

191 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Two engines were pulling our train, and a third 
was pushing behind, as we climbed toward the 
divide. It was a bright morning, and as we rose 
above the clouds we could see them huddling on the 
opposite side of the deep valleys. Now and then 
we slipped through the upper edge of one of them. 
For a time we rode just over the top of a cloud, and 
for some distance it was just below us. 

There came into my section a little girl and boy 
who lived in Oklahoma. The boy was full of won- 
der and outspoken admiration. But his sister was 
older and worldly wise. The little boy cried: 

“Oh, look! look! We're riding right on top of 
a cloud!” 

But his sister said, “A cloud ain’t nothing 
but fog. Nobody can’t ride on a cloud; we’ve got 
rails under us, just the same as always.” 

The little boy said, “Jesus can ride onacloud, I 
saw a picture of Him.” 

The little girl answered, “Yes, but that ain’t us.” 

There are plenty of people who have that answer 
ready. But Jesus is “us.” He is our humanity, 
bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. And a 

192 


IN THE NEW TESTAMENT 


cloud is more than a fog. A cloud has silver linings 
which, for our purposes, fogs have not. A cloud 
can be risen above, and its upper side can be seen 
all lighted up by the sun. 

And Jesus came into the world to show us that 
very nearly every good thing that is true of God 
may be true of us, 


CHAPTER XII 
CAN WE COMMUNICATE WITH THE DEAD? 


A BELIEF that our loved ones are still living leads 
very naturally to the inquiry whether it is possible 
in any way to communicate with them. Attempts 
to establish communication with the dead are found 
in many forms of superstition and are not confined 
to the ignorant or uncivilized. The Bible affords 
us examples of the effort to recall the souls of those 
who have departed, notably in the case of Saul’s 
visit to the Witch of Endor. The prophecies of 
Isaiah contain a protest against the practises of 
those who consult “wizards that peep and mutter” 
and instead exhort the seeker after knowledge to 
go “to the law and the testimony.”’ 

Spiritualism is a new word, but the thing for 
which it stands is among the oldest of human su- 
perstitions. 

The belief in intercourse with the spirits of the 
departed in modern times may be said to begin with 

194 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


Emanuel Swedenborg. This Swedish scientist and 
seer had trances in which he professed to speak with 
the mighty dead of all ages. 

In the United States spiritism may be said to 
have begun its career of publicity in the year 1848. 
‘Two sisters, Maggie and Kate Fox, then living in 
Hydesville, New York, began a series of rapping, 
which were alleged to have been caused by super- 
natural means, but which in later years the sisters 
confessed to have been fraudulent and to have been 
produced by their own trickery. 

Interest in spiritualism gradually diminished, 
until about 1890, when it seemed likely to dis- 
appear. At that time, however, the phenomena of 
spiritualism began to be investigated by scientific 
men who maintained that even the crudest and 
least promising phenomena of this character ought 
not to be ruled out as evidence until it had been 
carefully investigated. 

Certain noted mediums became the subjects of 
much painstaking study by genuinely scientific 
men and there was organized in Great Britain and 
in America the Society for Psychical Research. 
Two of the most noted of these mediums, by reason 

195 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


of the attention bestowed upon them by scientifi¢ 
men, are Mrs. Piper of Boston, who for the past 
thirty years has been under almost constant super- 
vision, and Eusapia Palladino of Naples. Husapia 
was carefully studied by Cesare Lombroso of the 
University of Turin, who has given in detail the re- 
sults of his experiment in a large book entitled, 
After Death, What? — Skeptic though he was, she 
succeeded in convincing him. She subsequently 
came to America where she was detected in mani- 
fest fraud. Mrs. Piper is not known to have been 
engaged in consciously fraudulent performances. 
She has been studied by Professor William James,, 
Professor James H. Hyslop, and other men of 
note. The attention given to the subject by these 
distinguished men gave to psychic phenomena of! 
this general character a new dignity.* | 
William T. Stead, that stormy petrel of the lit- 
erary world, did much to popularize this so-called 
science. He believed that he had learned definitely 
from the spirit world that he was to be kicked to 





*Mrs. Piper’s trances and alleged communications were care= 
fully investigated by Professor G. Stanley Hall who told me that: 
he believed her honest, but unconsciously influenced by her depend- 
ence on her seances for financial support and that he utterly dis- 
eredited their supernatural character. 


196 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


death by a mob, with his jaw broken by one partic- 
ularly savage kick. This gave him great comfort, 
for he felt assured that he could die in no other 
way. But he went down on the Titanic with his 
jaw still in good condition. 

The great World War gave to spiritualism in its 
various forms a new and mighty impulse. Conan 
Doyle having won the ear of the world with his 
entertaining stories of Sherlock Holmes, wrote a 
book, which is very dogmatic and very unconvinc- 
ing, in which perhaps the best paragraphs are 
these, in which the spirits are alleged to elevate our 
thought of heaven a little above that which is given 
to us by the ordinary medium: 


But there is a great deal of a higher intellectual 
life stript of grossness and materialism—the curse 
of the present day. ‘Therein the inhabitants fol- 
low out their destiny much as we do here. 'Those 
who are intellectual pursue their speculations and 
their artistic pursuits, and every gift finds its full 
fruition there. Those who were less spiritual on 
earth remain in some intermediate state until they 
are ready to progress. 

Heaven, as we understand it, is the final goal of 
all. ‘The passing period of development varies ac- 
cording to the advancement or merit of the soul. 


197 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


But it is strange to find persons of apparently in- 
ferior position on earth occupying there an exalted 
place. For the man who has worked up from hum- 
ble beginnings is likely to be more highly consid- 
ered than he who has had every advantage, but has 
been comparatively inactive throughout his life. 
Nor is one’s individuality merged in the new 
world. One is broadened, but is still tinged by the 
old views. The teaching of the other world is that 
all religions are good as long as they lead to spirit- 
uality, and are bad as far as they retard it. The 
man of low spiritual stature is longer traveling 
through to the higher plane than the other. He is 
isolated from contact with the best spirits, save 
when they descend to him upon missionary work. 


There is not very much to criticize in the above, 
except the notion that a statement of this sort 
needed any intelligence for its dictation above that 
of Conan Doyle himself. This is simply Conan 
Doyle’s idea of heaven and there is no reason why 
either he or any one else should seek to claim for it 
any higher authority than his own opinion. 'To- 
gether with the rest of his book it lacks all convine- 
ing proof of containing anything higher or nobler 
than he could have produced, while that which 
comes to him through the mediums is manifestly in- 
ferior to his own mental production. 

198 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE! 


Most notable of the products of the war as it 
relates to the growth of spiritualism is the book 
Raymond, by Sir Oliver Lodge. It is a memoir of 
his son and an account of alleged communications 
with him since his death. 

Raymond Lodge was the youngest son of Sir 
Oliver and Lady Lodge. He volunteered for serv- 
ice in the British Army in September, 1914, re- 
ceived a commission as second lieutenant and was 
killed in action, September 14, 1915, aged twenty- 
SIX. 

About six weeks before the death of Raymond, 
Sir Oliver received from Mrs. Piper, the noted 
American medium, a message purporting to have 
come to her from the spirit world, from his old 
friend, F. W. H. Myers, author in his lifetime of 
two massive volumes on spiritualism. The mes- 
sage read as follows: 

“Now, Lodge . . . Myers says, you take the 
part of the poet, and he will act as Faunus .. . 
Ask Verrall; she will understand.” 

Sir Oliver had no difficulty in recognizing the 
reference to Verrall. Mrs. Verrall was a well- 
known spiritualist and also a classical scholar. Sir 

199 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Oliver was already a spiritualist, an active member 
of the Society of Psychical Research, and for a 
quarter of a century had been keenly interested in 
the subject of survival after death. He made 
haste to inquire of Mrs. Verrall whether she under- 
stood the allusion to Faunus. She turned to her 
Horace and found a place where that poet referred 
to his narrow escape from death from a falling tree. 
It is a well-known passage and one sometimes 
quoted in books on Latin grammar because of an 
unusual grammatical construction. Horace says 
that the falling of the tree might have killed him 
had not Faunus, guardian of poets, preserved him. 
Connington’s translation of these lines reads: 


“Me, the curst trunk, that smote my skull, 
Had slain; but Faunus, strong to shield 
‘The friends of Mercury, check’d the blow 
In mid descent.” 


Mrs. Piper received this communication August 
8, 1915, and mailed it to Sir Oliver. He wrote to 
Mrs. Verrall and she answered him on September 
8, citing the above text and translation. It would be 
interesting to know just what impression Sir Oliver 
got from it when he first received this interpreta- 

200 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


tion. Apparently Mrs. Verrall guessed correctly 
the meaning of Mrs. Piper’s allusion. It is not 
necessary to suppose that Mrs. Piper received any 
supernatural information concerning F'aunus, nor 
was it necessary for her to become a classical 
scholar. In her rather wide and superficial reading 
she could quite easily have fallen upon the passage. 
No great risk was run in sending it to Sir Oliver. 
Assuming that his studies in other lines had caused 
him to ignore the passage, it was a safe guess that 
Mrs. Verrall would be able to identify the refer- 
ence. If after that nothing happened to Sir Oliver 
it was because his friend Myers was doing for him 
what Faunus did for Horace. If anything terrible 
happened it would be safe to assume that it would 
have been worse but for the protection of Myers 
still acting the part of F'aunus, defender of the 
friends of Mercury. Sir Oliver Lodge is no poet 
and the allusion was rather far-fetched. But it 
answered all the requirements. 

It is interesting to note, however, that Myers, 
who was a noted spiritualist in his day and master 
of all the arts of that system, being now in heaven, 
was compelled to send his messages to his old 

201 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


friend, equally skilled in matters of spiritualism, by 
way of Mrs. Piper and by further way of Mrs. 
Verrall. Far-fetched and ambiguous and round- 
about as the message was, it is the only thing in the 
book possessing any approach to inherent dignity. 
The Delphic oracle was not more ambiguous. The 
Faunus message if never interpreted did no harm, 
and if interpreted it was certain to be a satisfaction 
to a man like Sir Oliver Lodge, whether anything 
happened or not. 

Six days after Sir Oliver received Mrs. Verrall’s 
interpretation of Mrs. Piper’s transmitted message 
from Mr. Myers, Second Lieutenant Raymond 
Lodge was killed in action. His death occurred on 
September fourteenth and the family soon learned 
of it. Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge lost little time 
in going to a professional medium. A Mrs. Ken- 
nedy, who had lost a son in June of the same year 
and had introduced herself to Sir Oliver Lodge by 
letter on August sixteenth, proffered her good of- 
fices as soon as she knew of the death of Raymond 
and arranged for very nearly all the sittings that 
followed in which Sir Oliver and his wife consulted 
professional mediums and obtained what they 

202 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


thought were revelations. Lady Lodge went on 
the twenty-fifth of September, and Sir Oliver hur- 
ried to London two days later to see the same 
medium, a Mrs. Leonard. This Mrs. Leonard had 
as her control a little Indian maiden named Feda, 
and talked a sort of foolish baby-talk, pronouncing 
Raymond, “Yaymond” and she wiggled her own 
body to show how Raymond’s dog wagged its tail 
in heaven. 

We shall not follow Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge 
on their weary and credulous tramp from one me- 
dium to another. ‘The story from this time on is 
the drivel of a medium under the alleged control of 
Feda, the Indian child, Moonstone a dead Yogi, 
Biddy an Irish washer-woman, and other puerile or 
senile personalities of the spirit world. The de- 
tails may be read in full in Sir Oliver’s book and 
they are pathetic in their vapidity. 

The first message came to Mrs. Kennedy from 
her own son through a professional medium. It 
read: 

“TI have seen that boy, Sir Oliver’s son; he’s bet- 
ter, and has a splendid rest. ‘Tell his people.” 

Perhaps in the spirit land a lad of seventeen 

203 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


speaks of a man of twenty-six and a commissioned 
officer as “that boy.” But that is not the custom in 
tthe British army; indeed, the activity of Mrs. Ken- 
nedy in these subsequent sittings with professional 
mediums opens every necessary opportunity for 
such information as a medium requires. Sir Oliver 
states he believes that Mrs Kennedy did not give 
the medium any information as to who were the 
distinguished visitors coming to them; and he says 
it is not probable that mediums have time to hunt 
up family information. Both suppositions are dis- 
tinectly contrary to probability. Indeed, when it 
was known that a son of Sir Oliver Lodge had 
been killed, every medium in London must have 
been on tiptoe with expectation that he and his 
family would be seeking communication with Ray- 
mond. ‘The newspapers must have furnished them 
a considerable part of the information they wanted 
and Mrs. Kennedy may at least have dropped a 
few unintentional intimations that the people for 
whom she was arranging sittings were very impor- 
tant people, 

Sir Oliver and Lady Lodge obtained what they 
wanted, ‘They secured communications from Ray- 

204 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


mond and a detailed description of the dog he had 
with him in heaven, the dog who according to Feda 
had nice hair and seemed to be of dark color and 
had ears that did not stand up and that wagged his 
tail in a manner which Feda illustrated by body 
movements of her own. Beside this description of 
Raymond’s dog, the most interesting things com- 
municated by Raymond Lodge and Paul Ken- 
nedy, were, first, that heaven is filled with the 
lonely souls of dead soldiers, eager to communicate 
with their friends but unable to do so unless those 
friends will consult professional mediums; and sec- 
ondly, (Sir Oliver Lodge appeared to count this a 
sort of scientific basis for the continuity of sub- 
stance and life in heaven) that things rotting here 
on earth send up a stench which affords the phys- 
ical basis for their restoration as actual entities in 
heaven. This is a heaven made up out of the bad 
smells of earth, a place of celestial stenches, glori- 
fied and made immortal! 

There is one other bit of alleged evidence which 
he introduces, namely, a reference to a photograph 
of Raymond, which the family did not know to be 
in existence, a group photograph which later came 

205 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


to them. Considering, however, how busy the cam- 
era was in making group photographs of soldiers, 
it would have been almost miraculous if some such 
group had not contained a picture of Raymond. 
The photograph is published in the book and very 
nearly every detail of it appears to have been in- 
correctly reported by the medium. 

What most impresses a reader is the utter lack of 
anything that can truthfully be called the scien- 
tific spirit in the book. Sir Oliver Lodge is, or has 
been, a great scientist, but this is neither a great 
book nor a scientific book. The author’s fame as a 
scientist can not protect him from the just criticism 
of having given to the world as spiritual comfort 
the drivel of the ignorant and designing medium. 

The grief of a heart-broken father entitles Sir 
Oliver Lodge to the reader’s sincere sympathy; 
but neither this nor any awe of his great name can 
protect him from the righteous indignation of 
those who resent this foisting upon the world of 
so-called comfort in the form of a heaven with 
cigars and whisky and soda and of utterly vapid 
occupations and concerns. Perhaps the most com- 
forting thing that Sir Oliver and Mrs. Lodge 

206 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


might have got would have been the description of 
Raymond’s dog, which, unfortunately they were 
not able to identify. 


He has brought that doggie again, nice doggie. 
A doggie that goes like this, and twists about 
(Feda indicating a wriggle). He has got a nice 
tail, not a little stumpy tail, nice tail with nice hair 
on it. He sits up like that sometimes, and comes 
down again, and puts his tongue out of his mouth. 
He’s got a cat, too, plenty of animals, he says. He 
hasn’t seen any lions and tigers, but he has seen 
horses, cats, dogs, and birds. He says you know 
this doggie, he has nice hair, a little wavy, which 
sticks up all over him, and has twists at the end. 
Now he’s jumping round. He hasn’t got a very 
pointed face, but it isn’t like a little pug-dog either ; 
it’s rather a long shape. And he has nice ears with 
flaps not standing up; nice long hairs on them too, 
darkish color he looks, darkish, as near as I can see 
him. | 


To such low estate has science fallen in Sir Oli- 
ver Lodge’s investigation that the evidence which 
he submits contains all the crudities and vulgarities 
of the trance-medium, the table-rapper and the au- 
tomatic writer. By these several methods, each 
with its invitation to fraud and its necessity of 


employing professional interpreters of alleged 
207 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


spirit messages, he and his family are supposed to 
have communicated with his dead son. All Sir 
Oliver Lodge’s twenty-five years of work in the 
Society of Psychical Research had not availed to 
make it possible for Raymond to come to his father 
directly. All his dead associates in the Society of 
Psychical Research, including Mr. Myers, were 
helpless to come to him, except through these 
crude and suspicious agencies. It is interesting to 
read that at one of these seances a table which had 
been rapping out Raymond’s messages became so 
charged with Raymond’s living personality that it 
tried to climb up into Lady Lodge’s lap. 

Sir Oliver Lodge himself in an interview a few 
months after the publication of his book, admitted 
that no progress had been made in subsequent rev- 
elation. He said: 

“The stress and anxiety to communicate have 
subsided in our case. The wish to give evidence re- 
mains, but now that the fact of survival and happy 
employment is established, the communications are 
placid.” 

The happy employment referred to would ap- 
pear to be chiefly the use of cigars and whisky 

208 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


and soda and playing with the dog which Feda de- 
scribed with characteristic ambiguity. If Sir Oliver 
and his family are comforted, no one else need 
complain. 

Professor James H. Hyslop in his book, Life 
after Death, approaches the phenomena of the 
professional mediums in a much more scientific 
spirit than Sir Oliver Lodge. He admits the 
crudity and vulgarities of the mediums, and he 
urges that the intellectual limitations of the me- 
dium, the inadequacy of language to convey mean- 
ings except in terms of the sensory life and the 
pragmatic nature of the ordinary mind, carry with 
them an almost irresistible tendency to conceive of 
any spiritual environment after the analogy of the 
physical world. 

This is the best explanation that can probably be 
‘ given and it is entitled to some weight. Hyslop 
Says: 


The spiritual life after death is mentally created, 
so to speak, and hence the analogies with the 
earthly life are not sensory in respect to stimulus, 
but mental and creative. That is to say, it is 
not the physical life that survives, but the inner 
life and death leaves us with the internal mental 


209 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


faculties intact. The spirit enters into the new 
life with memory, imagination and self-conscious- 
ness; and it builds up an idealistic world in the 
new state of existence formed according to our de- 
gree of progress in spiritual things, and more or 
less a reflection of our earthly experience. 


He, therefore, maintains that there is a three- 
fold limitation. The spirit itself is limited in its 
new environment. The medium is limited in pow- 
ers of interpretation. We also are limited in re- 
spect to that which we are able to receive from the 
spirit world. 

Accepting this statement by Professor Hyslop 
as reasonable, two questions arise. First, why is it 
that with heaven filled with spirits in all grades of 
spiritual development, virtually the only ones 
which have succeeded in establishing communica- 
tion with earth are those who talk baby talk, or 
who jabber in foolish, broken sentences? Why 
must Raymond, in looking about heaven for some 
one to convey a message to his father, communicate 
through the little Indian maiden Feda, whose In- 
dian chatter appears as such only to those who 
never knew any Indians? Why must he go to the 
spirit of Moonstone, the dead Yogi, or to the soul 

210 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


of Biddy, the Irish washer-woman? Why do none 
of Oliver Lodge’s associates in the Society of Psy- 
chical Research talk to him in language at least as 
good as they were accustomed to use when on 
earth? 

A few years ago a St. Louis woman undertook 
to interest her friends in some alleged communica- 
tions which she professed to have had from a lady 
of about the Elizabethan period who discoursed in 
alleged old English and claimed the name of Pa- 
tience Worth. Her literary achievements inter- 
ested some people who should have known better, 
and resulted in the publication of a volume of the 
writings alleged to have been of this person. ‘The 
volume presumably may still be found by any who 
care to see what mediocre performances the spir- 
its indulge in and how highly these banalities are 
rated by those who bring to them the proper qual- 
ity of adoration. As a matter of fact, no single 
great thought has come into human life through 
any modern commerce with alleged spirits. ‘The 
souls of the mighty dead have shriveled pitifully 
if they are now capable of such trash as the me- 
diums have uttered in their name. 

Agnes Repplier in a magazine article, entitled 

211 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Dead Authors, makes a rather long list of people 
who were able to write good literature when they 
were on earth, from whom alleged revelations have 
recently been received, and neither Mark 'Twain 
nor O. Henry nor Charles Dickens is now able to 
write anything nearly as good as when he was on 
earth. 

The other question relates to the intellectual and 
spiritual caliber of the medium. Even Mrs, Piper, 
most famous of American mediums, had as her 
habitual “control” a queerly named spirit less intel- 
ligent than herself. Professor William James, 
who studied her for twenty years, had to admit that 
he awaited “new facts, clearer and more precise” 
before he could say with certainty whether her 
alleged revelations contained anything of the su- 
pernatural. He died waiting. Meantime her pow- 
ers of this character instead of growing more bril- 
liant have diminished. 

It might be supposed, because alleged spiritistic 
phenomena come to us now vouched for by noted 
men of science, that there has been some change in 
their character since the table-rapping of the Fox 
sisters and the crude and illiterate babblings of the 

212 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


mediums. On the contrary, we are still face to 
face with the familiar old methods, which lent 
themselves so easily to fraud that they were ex- 
posed as such in case after case. The only notable 
difference is that now these are the alleged phe- 
nomena of the spirit world under scientific obser- 
vation. Now we have the phenomena catalogued 
and the alleged communications recorded, and the 
means of fraud lessened if not eliminated. But the 
means of fraud were not eliminated in the case of 
Kusapia Palladino, who interested the scientific 
investigators of two continents, and who com- 
pletely deceived even so seasoned a skeptic as 
Lombroso. 

The most recent notable case in America of al- 
leged spirit communication under conditions which 
entitle it to any attention is that of “Margery” the 
wife of a prominent Boston surgeon. Her case 
has been the subject of investigation at Harvard, 
under a commission appointed by the Scientific 
American, which has offered a prize for a well au- 
thenticated super-normal revelation under test 
conditions. Full accounts of this case have been 
published. The interesting fact is, not that the 
case is manifestly one where deliberate imposture 

213 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


has been practised, but that such imposture, of the 
crudest possible sort, so nearly succeeded in impos- 
ing upon the learned men who observed the case.* 

When those who profess to come to us with rev- 
elations from the dead begin by surrounding 
themselves with apparatus such as might easily 
lend itself to fraud, and such as repeatedly has 
been used in the interests of fraud, it begins to be 
time for sensible people to lose interest. 

People who read the names of the distinguished 
men who have surrendered to this delusion, do not 
all consider that the revelations which they suppose 
themselves to have received are not direct revela- 
tions to themselves, but such revelations as they 
have been able to delude themselves into supposing 
they have received through mediums, not all of 
them of very high intellectual or moral grade, and 
through such experiences as the attempt of a table 
to climb up into the lap of Lady Lodge and cuddle 
there as a substitute for the grown man who had 
once been her baby, and who had died an officer on 
the battle-field. 





*See concerning this investigation an article on “Science and 
the Medium” by Hudson Hoagland, in the Atlantic Monthly, for 
November, 1925. 

214 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


This at least deserves to be remembered concern- 
ing all this recent interest in spiritualism, that it 
does not appear to have in it a shred of religion. 
When Conan Doyle affirms that in this form re- 
ligion is to survive, he seems to fail to inquire 
whether the form of belief which he is commending 
is In any true sense religious. Life after death is 
not of necessity religious, any more than life before 
death is religious. A heaven of woolly dogs and 
whisky and soda is not of necessity religious. What 
has been disclosed in all this alleged revelation con- 
cerning God, or love or hope or duty? 

Is it any comfort to believe that our beloved dead 
are occupied in nothing better worth while than in 
trying to “get across” with such communications 
as have come from the tipped tables and the dark 
cabinet and the alleged trance utterance of the 
mediums / 

Meantime, those men and women who earn their 
money by making people think they have news 
from heaven have awaiting them a standing reward 
when they can exhibit any proof that the phe- 
nomena they produce require belief in a supernat- 
ural agency, or can not be duplicated by clever 

215 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


magicians. Until we have some better evidence 
than yet has come to us it is better and more dig- 
nified and more religious to leave our beloved who 
have departed beyond our sight in the hands of the 
Father of their spirits and ours. 

My own mother died more than thirty-five years 
ago. She was an earnest, spiritually minded 
woman, who had implicit faith in immortality, and 
if there is such a thing as communication between 
the two worlds, her spirit could have no greater joy 
than in communication with the children whom she 
dearly loved. Let us suppose then that my mother 
desires to send a message to me. What will be 
the process by which she establishes communica- 
tion with her eldest son? ) 

In the first place she will be compelled to look 
about heaven until she finds some little Indian 
maiden, or some Irish washer-woman who is on 
speaking terms with some particular medium; then 
Feda or Biddy will communicate with me through 
some woman, whom my mother, if living, would be 
very desirous that I should not know. Then with 
my mother’s beautiful thoughts vulgarized into 
alleged Indian baby talk by Feda and still further 

216 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


vulgarized by the medium, I may obtain some 
precious piece of information which it is supposed 
the medium could not have known and which 
therefore the spirit of my mother must have com- 
municated. 

What will that message be? This perhaps, or 
something as important, that there is a small hole 
in the toe of my left stocking caused by a nail in my 
shoe of which up to the present time I have had no 
knowledge. If having paid two dollars to the me- 
dium I return home and find the hole and the nail 
I am supposed to admit that this must have been a 
message from my mother in heaven. It is my own 
opinion that if my mother in heaven ever sends a 
message to me she will send it through some chan- 
nel that she would have recognized while living and 
that the message itself will possess inherent value. 

We have need of a revival of faith in immortality 
without superstition. We need a heaven high 
above the maudlin and almost imbecile heaven of 
the mediums. We need a life beyond the grave 
which is worthy of God, the author of life, and of 
Jesus Christ, who brought life and immortality to 
light. 

217 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


It is not enough to believe that our dead friends 
exist in a state of celestial feeble-mindedness, and 
that we may communicate with them through per- 
sons admittedly their intellectual and spiritual in- 
feriors upon this side. We need faith in an immor- 
tality that possesses ethical and spiritual value. 

Jesus said, “Lay hold on eternal life.’ The 
word “eternal” as He used it had more than the 
suggestion of time: it had in it the connotation of a 
moral value. His words meant “Lay hold on the 
life that is life indeed.” The doctrine of life after 
death as Jesus taught it is more than the doctrine 
of the continuity of existence. It is the doctrine of 
the permanence of spiritual values. Such a doc- 
trine, the doctrine of a life beyond the grave based 
upon the integrity of God, the value of moral life, 
and the deepest and most ennobling affirmations 
of the human intellect, and the richest and most 
abiding longings of the human soul, is the doctrine 
that in the present hour of spiritual chaos needs to 
be uttered with assurance and power. 

Nor need we question the practical value of such 
a faith. It will impart value to this present life, 
and give added worth to every article of Christian 

218 | 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


faith. “Godliness is profitable unto all things, 
having promise of the life that now is, and that 
which is to come.” Every effort to make this a bet- 
ter world will be mightily strengthened by a re- 
newed faith that this life is a part of God’s great 
whole. The social gospel needs for its higher 
reaches of endeavor and the crown of its aspiration 
and the motive of its activity this dynamic which is 
attested in the Word of God—‘the power of an 
endless life.” 

Are our dead friends near us, and do they know 
what we are doing, and can they share our life and 
thought? 

I hope they do not know all that causes us anx- 
iety and concern. If they do, I hope they are 
enough wiser than we not to fret and worry as we 
do. I hope that the veil between us is sufficiently 
merciful to shut from their sight some of our fol- 
lies and sins and pains. But I should not like to 
think that they had no part in our life and no 
knowledge of how it fares with us. 

I have sometimes thought of it in this way. Let 
us suppose that the spirits of our loved ones, more 
on the other side than here, still have a community 

219 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


of interest, still cherish a common concern for our 
well-being, yet are unable to communicate with us. 
Would that be so very lonely and unnatural an ex- 
perience? We have an analogy in our present life. 
It is the family concern for the baby not yet born. 

Consider for a moment a home in which there is 
to be a baby. The father and mother know about 
it, have known for a long time. Even the children 
are told that before very long God will send to this 
home a little life, a new little brother or sister. The 
whole family shares the knowledge of the little one 
that is to be born. 

Now, this little unborn life is not up in heaven, 
nor on another planet, nor far away. It is here, 
among us, under the same roof with us. Mother is 
carrying this precious little life under her heart un- 
til the glad and solemn day when through the 
blessed and awful ministry of pain it shall be born. 
It is no stranger to be sent to us from a foreign 
land; it is already a member of the family, here 
just as certainly as we are here. 

We can influence this little life already. In 
countless ways we can make provision for it. We 
can love it, and we do; we can pray for it, and we 

220 


CAN WE COMMUNICATE? 


do. When it comes, it is not an intrusion; it is the 
manifestation of a life that all the while had been 
among: us. 

I do not know any reason why it may not be so 
in the case of our loved ones who have been born 
into the heavenly life. There is no reason for us to 
think of them as distant; they may not be remote 
at all. They may be as conscious of us as we were 
conscious of the unborn child. They may love us, 
care for us, and promote our welfare in ways we 
do not know. 

Life would be poor but for our dead. They are 
still ours. They are not hopelessly lost to us. And 
they may be nearer to us than we think. 


CHAPTER XIIT 
UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


I am ready now to meet tle objection of some 
reader who may have followed the argument thus 
far, but has held all the while in the back of his 
mind a serious objection. He says, if I hear him 
aright, “It would be very pleasant to agree with 
you, but your faith in immortality has joined to it. 
a terrible corollary. You believe in an eternal hell, 
into which those who leave this world in what you 
call sin are plunged in hopeless and unspeakable 
torment. I have had friends, well-loved and dear 
to me, who left this world in the state you thus de- 
scribe. I can not pretend that they were Chris- 
tians; [ can not even say that they were good. But 
they were not hopeless, even as judged by our short 
measure of hope. No human father, no matter how 
sorely tried and perplexed with their folly and per- 
verseness, would have sent them even to prison, 

222 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


much less to hell. You have made the doctrine of 
immortality, which ought to have been beautiful, a 
very terrible thing on account of your teaching of 
eternal retribution. I would far rather believe that 
God wiped the slate clean, got rid of all of us, 
charged up our virtues to profit and our sins to 
loss, than to believe in an eternal hell.” 

I am ready, as I have said, to face this objection, 
which I think has right to a frank consideration. 

The doctrine of an endless hell, flaming with 
physical torture, may be said to have been a very 
precious one in the past, and in some form a very 
necessary one. But we shudder as we look back no 
very long time to what good people thought they 
believed about it. No gentler soul lived than Isaac 
Watts, yet what terrible things he put into some of 
his hymns, of people doomed to endless death, yet 
never dying, and this for the primary. reason that 
they had inherited the sin of Adam: 


Backward with humble Shame we look 
On our Original; 

How is our Nature dashed and broke 
In our first F'ather’s Fall! 


Ffow strong in our degenerate Blood 
The old Corruption reigns, 


223 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


And mingling with the crooked Flood | 
Wanders through all our Veins! 


Here is another hymn which our ancestors loved 
to sing: 


Far in the Deep where Darkness dwells 
The Land of Horror and Despair, 
_ Justice has built a dismal hell, 
And laid her stores of Vengeance there. 


Eternal Plagues and heavy chains, 
Tormenting Racks, and fiery Coals, 

And darts to inflict immortal Pains, 
Dyed in the Blood of damnéd Souls. 


There Satan, the first Sinner, lies, 
And roars, and bites his Iron Bands; 
In vain the Rebel strives to rise, 
Crushed with the weight of both Thy hands. 


There guilty Ghosts of Adam’s Race 
Shriek out, and howl beneath Thy rod; 

Once they could scorn a Saviour’s grace, 
But they incensed a dreadful God. 


Tremble, my soul, and kiss the Son, 
Sinner, obey the Saviour’s Call, 
Kilse your Damnation hastens on, 
And Hell gapes wide to wait your Fall. 
224 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


This is the terrible picture of the God of their 
hymns: 


His Nostrils breathe out fiery Streams, 
And from his awful Tongue 

A sovereign Voice divides the I‘lames 
And Thunder roars along. 


Tempests of angry Fire shall roll 
To blast the Rebel Worm, 
And beat upon his naked soul 
In one eternal Storm. 


This is the picture of the living death to which a 
loving God was supposed to have consigned his 
children: 


What, to be banished from my Life, 
And yet forbid to die: 

To linger in eternal Pain, 
Yet death forever fly? 


It is possible that there are still some Christians, 
and very gentle ones, who hold these views; but 
these dogmas no longer appear in our hymn-books. 
He who believes in this kind of a hell must believe 
it alone; he can not find others to sing it with him, 
nor a hymn-book in which it is set to be sung. 

225 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


I believe in hell. If there is no hell, it is time one 
was established. If there is no hell, some one has 
been negligent. 

But there is a hell. I have seen men in it. Fur- 
thermore, I have known men living who have made 
no visible preparation here for any other kind of 
future. I have known men who, if they lived after- 
ward as they lived here, were of such sort that, if 
they died and did not find a hell, they would have 
established one within fifteen minutes after their 
arrival in heaven. Character being what it is, some 
sort of hell is inevitable. The Bible teaches that 
there is a hell. And the Bible does not describe it 
as a desirable place. The figures of speech which 
are used to describe it are most unpleasant. 

But what is the character of hell? Is it a place 
for the display of the divine vindictiveness? Is ita 
place where sin is licensed to go on forever un- 
restrained? Is it a place where God has abdicated, 
and where love can never enter? So far as that 
part of the universe is concerned, has God given it 
up in despair? 

I could not believe any of those things if I be- 
lieved as I do ina good God. If there is a hell, and 

226 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


1 think there is, men make it themselves by their 
own wickedness; it is the inevitable expression of 
their own character. 

If there is a hell, it is a good hell. A good God 
could permit no other kind. If there is a hell, a 
good God has established it because it is the logical 
and necessary result of character expressing itself 
in destiny. If there is a hell it is because the moral 
universe needs it. I will go even further and say 
that if there is a hell, it is because those who go 
there need it. If there is a hell it is because it is the 
best place to which a loving God can send, or per- 
mit to be sent, the people whose own wilfulness 
drives them in violation of God’s desire that they 
would accept something better. I think there is 
such a hell. | 

Let us frankly admit that the Hebrew word 
which is translated “hell” conveyed no such mean- 
ing to the Jewish mind as our English word “hell” 
conveys to present-day readers. “Sheol” was not 
primarily a place of torture, but the abode of the 
dead. Sometimes it was thought of as divided, but 
the division had no such sharp and clear definition 


as has come to it in Christian theology. 
227 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Our modern word hell conveys to the imagina- 
tion a very different thought than that which it 
brought to the people of the Old Testament. When 
the Psalmist said, “If I make my bed in Sheol,” he 
did not think of a place of torment as a punishment 
for sin. He was thinking of some dark, gloomy 
and forbidding abode of the dead, a place shrouded 
with gloom and impenetrable to human investiga- 
tion. He was thinking of the place to which all 
human life goes and from which no human life 
returns. 

The Psalmist asked himself whether the abode 
of the dead was a place of utter hopelessness. He 
thought it could not be so. No barrier could shut 
God out of there. Life and death were not to him 
so absolutely inseparable that God could be shut 
out from any part of his universe. 

This was what the Psalmist was thinking and in 
strict justice to his thought we ought to use the 
word “Sheol” here instead of the word “hell.” Yet; 
I am using the word “hell” with intent, for if the 
Psalmist’s thought is true at all, it must be true 
not only of the Hebrew Sheol but of the Christian’s 
hell. There can not be any part of God’s moral 


228 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


universe from which God himself is excluded. ‘The 
Love that dwells in the highest heaven must some- 
how reach to the lowest hell. 

I am willing to ask whether even with our blunt- 
est and cruelest modern conception attaching to 
the word “hell,” the verse is not true? Is God in 
the bottomless pit? There are verses in the Bible 
which read as if that might be true. The wicked 
are spoken of as banished from the presence of 
God. Yet I must believe for myself that banish- 
ment from God’s presence can only be a fact of ex- 
perience and not of actual reality. To say of a 
sinner that he departs from the presence of God is 
the same as to say the sun goes down. But the sun 
does nothing of the sort: the earth merely turns its 
back upon the sun and hides in the darkness of its 
own shadow. The sun is shining all the time: the 
earth can not possibly get out of the sunshine. All 
it can do is to make a little tapering shadow and 
creep into it, but that shadow is less than a fly- 
speck on the face of the heavens. 'The sun is flood- 
ing the universe with light. Even the light which 
the earth stops by casting a shadow is not de- 
stroyed. It is gathered up on the face which the 

229 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


earth exposes to the sun and not a ray of all that 
glorious light is permanently wasted. 

God himself must be in hell. It is a shocking 
thing to say, but it certainly must be true. If it 
were not so God would be less than infinite. ‘There 
can be no corner of God’s universe from which He 
is absent. The sufferings of the damned are not 
apart from Him, they are not unfelt by Him. In 
the last analysis I think they are not inflicted by 
Him. They inhere in the very nature of sin, which 
makes it inevitable that transgression should carry 
with it shame and pain. 

Shall we say that the sufferings of hell are re- 
demptive? I should not dare to say that because 
i do not know. ‘There is nothing in the Bible that 
forbids that hope. I will not argue with any one 
about the mere meaning of the Greek and Hebrew 
words. It is not on the basis of the definition of 
single words that great doctrines like this are to be 
established. We can not be sure enough that we 
know the precise meaning of any ancient word in 
any dead language to determine on that basis alone 
our theory of hope for eternity. Somehow, some- 
time, God will manifest his kindness even in the 

230 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


blackness of the bottomless pit. There is no black- 
ness anywhere that is not somehow spanned by the 
rainbow of his goodness and his hope. 

Jesus spent most of his life in villages. When 
He visited Jerusalem He was interested in many 
of the details in which city life differed from rural 
and village life. One of these was the disposal of 
sewage and garbage. ‘That is a problem in every 
city and always has been. Jerusalem met the prob- 
lem in the crude but reasonably effective method 
of the age. It carted its refuse to the valley of Ge- 
henna and there burned what could be burned and 
left the rest to decompose on a level considerably 
lower than that of the city’s water supply. Jesus 
used Jerusalem’s city dump as a figure of speech 
for God’s method of dealing with refractory ma- 
terial. He said it would have to be thrown out into 
the valley of Gehenna “where the worm dieth not 
and the fire is not quenched.” | 

This figurative use of Jerusalem’s dump has 
done much to define the popular idea of hell, and 
its very name, “Gehenna,” is preserved in the trans- 
lation: for “Sheol” in the Old Testament and 
“hades” in the New, ought never to be translated 

231 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


“hell.” Let us recall for a moment the Jerusalem 
garbage pile, and the method of sewage disposal. 

The undying worm and the unquenchable fire 
are not symbols of torture, but of conservation. 
They are the symbols of the utilization of waste. 
The worm does not die, not because any one mag- 
got is miraculously endowed with immortality, but 
because the dump wagons are continually carting 
in more material for worms to feed upon and to 
lay eggs in. It is not because any one worm con- 
tinues to gnaw, or because any one carcass survives 
to be gnawed. 

The fire is not quenched because more fuel is 
continuously added. It is not because any one 
scrap of waste paper continues forever to burn. So 
far as the Jerusalem dump is concerned, when fuel 
ceases to be carted there will be no more devouring 
worm, and no more unquenchable fire. 

Meantime, the unquenched fire takes filth and 
makes of it clean ashes, good fertilizer, or even if 
leeched, good antiseptic. And the worm, ugly as 
he is to look at, converts garbage into something 
less repulsive. Then a bird flies over the valley and 
eats the worm; and the carrion becomes a carol; 


282 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


the stench is transformed into a song. Even the 
worm and the fire are God’s beneficent agents for 
turning the elements of destruction into products 
of constructive value to the world. They are not 
the symbols of despair but of God’s apparently 
thwarted but ultimately triumphant hope. 


Something should be said about the day of Judg- 
ment. There is such a day, and every day is a Judg- 
ment day. But “God hath appointed a day in 
which He will judge the world in righteousness, by 
that Man whom He hath ordained,” the Lord 
Jesus Christ. It is no less comforting than alarm- 
ing to know that there is to be a future reckoning; 
and it is most significant that both here and else- 
where Jesus the Christ is declared to furnish the 
basis of Judgment. 

The Fourth Gospel has this interesting word 
about the day of Judgment and the Judge: 


“For neither doth the Father judge any man, 
but He hath given all judgment unto the son; ... 
And he gave him authority to execute judgment, 
because he is a son of man.”—John 5:22-27, 

If you read these verses in the American Re- 
vision you will see that the word “son” in the title 


233 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


‘Son of man” is not capitalized as it usually is in 
the New Testament. That of course represents the 
judgment of the translators and might be a mis- 
take, but if you will read the passage carefully in 
the trend and meaning of Jesus’ argument, you 
will be likely to conclude that the translators are 
correct. The King James Version was unques- 
tionably wrong in using the definite article. When 
Jesus called himself ‘the Son of Man” He used 
the title in a sense that involved a particular dis- 
tinction, but when He says that God, the Iather, 
judges no. man but has committed all judgment 
unto the son, “because he is a son of man,” the term 
has a very different connotation. The Twentieth 
Century Version thus translates it. “Indeed the 
Father does not judge any one, but has entrusted 
the work of judging entirely to his Son; .. . 
and because He is man He has also given Him au- 
thority to act as judge.” 

We must not lose any part of the force of this 
affirmation. It affirms distinctly that were Jesus 
divine and only divine He would have some meas- 
ure of disqualification for acting as the world’s 
final judge. The Father judgeth no man, but His 
Son being man will be their judge. 

234 


- UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


This does not imply that the judgment will bea 
light thing for the wilfully wicked; but it promises 
that its tests will be reasonable and sympathetic, 
and its standards adjusted to human values and 
motives. 

His sympathy will not be the only quality in 
which the humanity of Jesus will fit Him to be our 
judge. Just because He was human, but in his 
humanity realized and lived the life of divinity, He 
must judge us for any failure we have made to at- 
tain that measure of divineness which was possible 
to us. “Of his fulness have all we received” and 
there was grace to supersede all grace which we 
thus far have realized and more than we have ap- 
propriated. For this failure we must be judged, 
not by the standards of an impossible Omnipotence 
but by the measure of those qualities realized in the 
human life of Jesus. He met temptation and suc- 
cessfully resisted it and called for no miracle to be 
wrought to enable Him thus to overcome. He 
lived and loved and died with the life of God tri- 
umphant in his mortal flesh. Have we done the 
same? 

Hope is the Cinderella of the three Christian 

235 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


graces. Faith and love are appraised at their real 
value, but hope is hopelessly at a disadvantage be- 
tween them. Iaith is a condition of salvation, and 
love is salvation. What room have we for hope? 
‘The answer is, that hope is the dynamic of salva- 
tion. The epistle to the Hebrews tells us that hope 
is an anchor to the soul (Hebrews 6:19). So it ts, 
and the anchor is its emblem, but hope is more than 
an anchor; it is an engine. 

Glorious things are said of hope by artists and 
poets, but after all most of them pity hope and say 
of her, “Poor thing; it’s fortunate she doesn’t know 
what really is coming.” ‘Thousands of people look 
at Watt’s familiar painting and say, “Is that 
Hope? I should think that was Despair.” The 
poets indeed have made Hope and Despair twin 
sisters. Milton says in Paradise Lost: 


What reinforcement we may gain from hope: 
If not what resolution from despair. 


Shelley went further and said, 


Worse than despair, 
Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope. 


Others who do not go so far are never able to 


236 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


think of hope without remembering how little there 
is to hope for. 
Shakespeare tells us that 


The miserable have no other medicine, 
But only hope. 


Pope in his Essay on Man, tells us that 


Hope springs eternal in the human breast: 
Man never is, but always to be blest. 


Through all these and a multitude of other quo- 
tations runs this idea that it is rather desirable that 
men should hope, but that there is not very much 
to hope for. It is thus we discount one of the three 
abiding Christian virtues. 

Greek mythology had its story of the creation 
of man. ‘I’o Prometheus and his brother Epime- 
theus was committed this task. :pimetheus had 
distributed the gifts of life so lavishly to others that: 
he had very little left to give to man; and for his 
sake Prometheus ascending to heaven brought 
down the gift of fire. To punish him for his au- 
dacity, Prometheus was chained to the rock with 
vultures forever tearing at his vitals, while to K:pi- 

237 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


metheus was sent the curse of the first woman. Her 
name was Pandora, for every one of the gods had 
given something to make her, and she had a box 
containing all the curses and just one blessing. Be- 
ing charged by her husband never to open the box, 
she lifted the cover with no worse intent than to 
take a momentary peep within, but all the ills of 
humanity, both those that afflict men’s bodies and 
those that torment the mind, rushed out. She shut 
the cover down barely in time to retain the one 
blessing, and that was hope. It was a poor com- 
pensation for the ill she had done, but it was richly 
worth the saving. 

Tope is among the most precious of human as- 
sets. We belittle it. We discount it. We count it 
a mark of inexperience. We say, “Blessed are they 
who expect nothing,” that is who have ceased to 
hope, “for they shall never be disappointed.” On 
the contrary, we ought to say, Blessed are they 
who, no matter how often they are disappointed, 
steadfastly continue to hope for all that is good. 

Alexander the Great wept because there were no 
more worlds to conquer. ‘That is not surprising. 
He was still a young man, and conquest was the 


238 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


business of kings. Any of us might do the same if 
we saw the end of life completely attained and the 
long years stretching ahead with nothing left to 
kindle the imagination or nerve the arm to valiant 
endeavor. 

I remember reading of a young American busi- 
ness man who had attained early in life everything 
he had thought desirable, and it had all come to him 
easily. Education, business success, wealth and 
social standing were all his; and one night a com- 
pany gathered in his honor to congratulate him on 
the completeness of his success. He received all 
the congratulations of his friends, and that night 
went home and put a bullet through his brain. 

Not without reason have the poets and philoso- 
phers linked together those two contrasting ele- 
ments, despair and hope. Even despair could not 
produce quite the paralysis of hope rendered hope- 
less by complete achievement. 

The World War raised anew the question 
whether we have a right to hope for salvation after 
death for those whom we do not know to have ac- 
cepted Christ in this ife. Our country suffered so 
little in comparison with Great Britain and the 

239 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


nations of the continent, we can hardly realize how 
tremendous has been the pressure of this appeal to 
those who hold the Christian faith and who have 
lost loved ones that had given no indication in 
their lifetime of their personal acceptance of Christ 
as a Saviour. In less degree, but still insistently, 
the question comes up to Christian thinkers here, 
“Are we forbidden to hope that our loved ones are 
saved 2” 

I have an unqualified answer to this question. 
We are not forbidden to hope for any good thing, 
for ourselves or for those dear to us. 

A while ago I had occasion to attend a portion 
of a murder trial. The defendant was a woman, 
and the circumstances were such that it was im- 
portant that she should establish a reputation for 
previous good character. One of the witnesses who 
appeared on her behalf was a neighbor and friend, 
and the attorney for the prosecution asked her on 
cross-examination a series of questions intending 
to show that she was not an unprejudiced witness. 
He asked her in succession, “Are you near neigh- 
bors? Are you intimate friends?” To these and 
other like questions she answered affirmatively. 

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UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


Then he asked her, “Do you not hope that she is 
going to be acquitted?” “I object,” interrupted the 
attorney for the defense, and then, very quietly, he 
added, “We all hope she is going to be acquitted.” 

The judge sustained the objection. It was the 
duty of every member of the jury to hope that she 
would be acquitted and to find her not guilty if he 
could. 

Our criminal jurisprudence compels judge and 
jury to hope for the acquittal of the accused and to 
give him the benefit of every reasonable doubt. 

Orthodox preaching has constantly reminded it- 
self that it must not take the edge off its appeal to 
men by holding out a hope of pardon after death. 
That feeling has been justified. We have no right 
to be dogmatic at a point where the word of God is 
so reticent, nor have we any right to superimpose 
our hard and fast meanings upon Scripture terms 
which were never intended thus to be employed. 

As Joseph Cook used to say with such tremen- 
dous emphasis, we have no right to teach men that 
it is safe for them to die in their sins. It certainly 
is not safe for men so to die. Neither is it safe for 
them to live in their sins. 

241 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


There is an old story of a devout old lady who 
rose in prayer meeting and said, “Lord, thou 
knowest that some people teach that all men are 
going to heaven; but we hope for something better 
than that.”” We should all be able to say, Amen, 
to such a prayer. I, personally, hope that God will 
find some way of making men fit for heaven; and 
that is something better than simply that they 
should get there. 

Of this I am sure. Punishment for sin will not 
continue after it ceases to do good. God’s love and 
mercy are not limited to time but belong also to 
eternity. If God does not save men in the next 
world it will be for the same reason that God does 
not save some men here, namely, that after God 
has done his utmost those men refuse to be saved. 

I have said that I dare to hope that God’s infinite 
love and compassion reach far beyond the limits of 
this short life. I believe that if God does not save 
men in the future life, it will be for the same rea- 
son that He does not save all men here, namely that 
they wilfully resist his salvation, so that He can not 
save them with a salvation which is of their free 
choice. I do not dogmatize on a theme so obscure, 

242 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


but I shall not be less than completely honest when 
I say that I hope that there is no eternity of suffer- 
ing and sin. I hope that God has some better way 
of dealing with even the worst of human sinners 
than to keep them alive that they may sin eternal- 
ly and thus compel Him to punish them eternally. 
When sin stops, then, I think, punishment will 
stop; and I hope that sin will not go on forever. 
An English poet, J. EK. Flecker, has written a 
short poem called Tenebris Interlucentem, in 
which he suggests how even in hell some gracious 
influence from without might stir a generous im- 
pulse within. If so, God will not refuse to send it. 


A linnet who had lost her way 
Sang on a blackened bough in Hell, 
Till all the ghosts remembered well 
The trees, the wind, the golden day. 


At last they knew that they had died, 
When they heard music in that land; 
And some one there stole forth a hand 

To draw a brother to his side. 


Some good people, accepting as Bible truth the 
doctrines which they had heard preached concern- 
245 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


ing hell, have suffered exquisite and unmerited 
tortures by reason of the death of loved ones whom 
they could not honestly declare were Christians, 
but whom they loved too much, and found too 
lovable, to believe that they deserved to be damned. 
Yet for these who were dearer to them than life 
they knew no possible fate but the eternal fires of 
satanic retribution. If this book shall fall into the 
hands of any such person, a father, perhaps or 
mother, to whom the grief had been hard enough 
without this excruciating element of cruel torture, 
let me say a word of comfort. 

I did not know this boy or girl or friend of yours, 
and have no authority to say what judgment awaits 
upon the other shore. But this I know, your love 
for this dear one is less than God’s, and his compas- 
sion is greater than yours. If there is anything that 
your love could do for that loved one, be sure God’s 
love will not do less. “If ye, then, being evil,” can 
not reconcile your thought to this dear one’s eter- 
nal loss, “how much more shall your Father who is 
in heaven” find methods of expressing a love that 
is not willing any should perish. 

Does any one say, “I thought you were an pert 

244 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


dox minister, and I discover that you are a Univer- 
salist?’ I am an orthodox minister, and I do not 
belong to the denomination which bears the fine 
name of Universalist. I am not sure that I am in 
all points in agreement with them, and I am abun- 
dantly happy in my own church. I once heard a 
Universalist minister say he believed “that God’s 
patch would be as large as sin’s rent.” I should not 
be willing to believe less. I believe more. I do not 
believe that where sin abounds grace shall almost 
as much abound, but that where sin abounds grace 
shall much more abound. I have some hope that I 
shall be found to cherish a belief almost as large as 
the promises of God and the love of Jesus Christ. 
That love can save to the uttermost. 

I hope. I hope for every sweet and beautiful 
thing I can think of. I hope there will not be an 
eternity of sin and suffering. I hope that sin will 
some time have run its mad course, and God will be 
all in all. I hope God will not maintain forever a 
protected and segregated red-light district. I 
should be ashamed of myself if I did not hope for 
something better than that sin and shame and suf- 
fering would go on forever. I hope the devil will 


245 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


either die or be converted. I dare not hope for 
anything less. 

I do not pretend to know; I only hope. And yet 
some things I think I know. I know that so long 
as hell endures, God suffers. I know that so long 
as there is one lost soul, Christ is on the cross. I 
hope for entirety, unity, and all-pervading good- 
ness. I hope this because I know that God is good. 
Hell will not endure forever unless such eternity is 
necessary to the expression of divine love. 


There are two arguments used by good men 
which do not in the least appeal to me. One of 
them is this. Jesus said that the wicked shall go 
into eternal punishment, and the word aionios in — 
the Greek means eternal and nothing else. That 
argument does not convince me; it does not even 
touch me. No modern lexicon can tell us precisely 
the meaning of any word in a dead language. We 
can not be sure that we occidentals who live with 
our watches in our hands can determine precisely 
the values of time words in ancient times or oriental 
lands. Moreover, Jesus did not speak Greek, but 
Aramaic; and we do not know of what Aramaic 

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UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


word the Greek aionios is a translation, nor what 
its time value was in the elastic and picturesque 
speech of Palestine. We do know from ancient lit- 
erature that the longest time-words were used with 
great flexibility. Jonah speaks of his three days’ 
imprisonment as “forever” because it seemed to 
him a long time. 

The other argument is this. “The Bible uses the 
same adjectives for the timelessness of both heaven 
and hell. If you show that hell is not inevitably 
eternal, you show that heaven also is not: eternal.” 
That is not true. There might be an official report 
of social conditions in Chicago or New York which 
would say that we must reckon with both the 
brothel and the church as permanent elements in 
our city’s life. The same word “permanent” might 
be used, and properly, in such a report. Yet there 
might be a million reasons why the brothel ought to 
go and the church not, and that very report might 
concern itself with plans for the ultimate elimina- 
tion of the brothel. 

If you were a minister, you would have to bury 
all sorts and conditions of people, good people and 
murderers, little children and wayward youth. 

24:7 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Sometimes a mother would come to you and ask 
about her boy who had died. She would say, “He 
was wayward, but he was not wholly bad. He was 
kind; in many ways he was good; but he was not a 
Christian. Is it wicked for me to hope?’ What 
would you tell her? I should tell her it would be 
wicked for her not to hope. I should tell her God 
loves her boy more than she does, and her own love 
is the reflection of God’s love for him. I should not 
dare tell her more, nor would I dare tell her less. I 
do not know much about it. I only know that God 
is good, and I hope for every great and beautiful 
thing. 

Does any man say, if what I have been saying is 
true, he will live sinfully here, and repent here- 
after? I can not think any man who hears me is so 
contemptibly mean. But if you are thinking any 
such thing, do you suppose you can live a reckless, 
wilful life here, and come to the gate of heaven and 
find an angel there with a crown and harp for you, 
and you take it and go in and be happy? You 
could not look a respectable angel in the face. You 
would want to go like Judas and hang yourself. 
And when you stood in the presence of Him who 

248 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


was crucified that He might save men, you would 
beat your breast and ask the privilege of slinking 
off to hell for a nmullennium or two, and then of 
scrubbing the golden streets for about a million 
years in the hope of some time becoming worthy of 
some very humble place in heaven. No, the logic 
of this chapter is this: You must reckon with the 
same God in whatever world you go to. If you go 
to hell, the most blistering fact that burns your 
consciousness will be the love of God. Since you 
must find Him wherever you go, and reckon with 
Him, do it now. 

The Sybil offered Tarquin nine books at a price. 
He refused, and she destroyed three, and doubled 
the price. Still he refused, and she destroyed three 
more and again doubled the price, then he bought 
the three that remained. No man has ever called 
him wise, or supposed that he drove a shrewd bar- 
gain. Noman acts wisely who postpones inevitable 
choices to an uncertain future, letting priceless op- 
portunities go to waste. 

There is a fine element of risk in the enterprises 
of God. There is a sublime appearance of uncer- 
tainty in the Divine undertakings. ‘There is that 

249 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


which fills the doubtful with a sense of the con- 
sciousness of success and throws into the sphere of 
the problematical a thrilling but trembling certain- 
ty. How can God be in hell? How can there be 
any hell? If there is a God what can be the mean- 
ing and function of hell? Of one thing we are cer- 
tain. The love of God like a rainbow spans the 
blackest abyss made possible by human sin. It is 
inconceivable that God should cease to love; it is 
utterly impossible that the heart of God should be- 
come a stranger to pity. 

Does it follow that there is hope in hell? Where 
there is life there is always hope. We dare not set 
limits to the compassion of God’s_ everlasting 
mercy. But the thought of God’s spirit as present 
in hell need not bring to us too swift an element of 
comfort. ‘The presence of the spirit of God in the 
heart of the transgressor must ever be the keenest 
element in the Divine retribution. The men of the 
Apocalypse who called upon the rocks to fall and 
cover them are seeking to escape from the presence 
not of Satan but of God. It is his presence that 
causes the sharpest shame and the bitterest re- 
morse. It is this which makes conscience so terrible 
to face. 

250 


UNTO THE NETHERMOST 


What is conscience after all but the presence of 
God in human memory? What is it that drives 
men to confession or to suicide when they have no 
accuser but themselves? 'To the wilful transgres- 
sor, to the shameful impenitent the presence of God 
in hell can bring only keener sorrow, only more 
swift and sure and poignant self-condemnation. 

And yet we need not shrink and must not shrink 
from the confident declaration that the presence of 
God is a ground of eternal hope. We have no au- 
thority whatever to say to any man that he can con- 
tinue in sin and dying impenitent can make up in 
some future life for opportunities neglected here. 
On the other hand, we have no right to limit the 
mercy of God. Punishment is not arbitrary. God’s 
grace is not vindictive. The love of God is a love 
not only unto the uttermost, but unto the nether- 
most. Punishment is for the sake of the good that 
God can do through punishment and can do in no 
other way. 


Deep below, as high above 
Swings the circle of God’s love. 


CHAPTER XIV 
MAY WE PRAY FOR OUR DEAD! 


Tue Protestant Reformation had its origin 
in a righteous protest against abuses then existing 
in the Roman Catholic Church. Among them, and 
chief among those that evoked the Theses of 
Luther, was that of the doctrine of Indulgences. 
The Pope was endeavoring to raise money for the 
completion of St. Peter’s at Rome; and one of the 
ways of securing it was by the sale of Indulgences. 
Whatever the Roman Church itself intended to 
teach, those who had the sale of these Indulgences 
taught that by the purchase of them with money 
designated for so holy a cause, men might buy par- 
don from sin for themselves or their dead friends. 
The souls of the dead were and are held to go, not 
direct to heaven, but to an intermediate state called 
Purgatory, where they are purged from the sins of 
earth preparatory to their entrance into heaven, 


aon 


MAY WE PRAY FOR OUR DEAD? 


They were held to have no power of earning 
money, but their living friends could contribute 
money, which, applied to the purchase of Papal In- 
dulgences, had the effect of shortening the period 
of their sojourn in Purgatory and lessening its 
rigors. 

Against this doctrine the Reformers protested 
with all their might; and in the reformed churches 
there was strong protest against any habit of 
prayer for the dead. This protest was intended as 
a safeguard against any recrudescence of the false 
doctrine of the value of purchased masses for the 
dead, and also as an expression of faith that the 
soul chooses in this life its eternal destiny. 

But when these superstitions are laid aside, there 
is still something to be said for an intermediate 
state between earth and heaven. ‘There are certain 
more or less obscure passages of Scripture which 
may be held to teach it. And beside this is a fact, 
that character as it exists in the life of men and 
women departing from this world, is not, in every 
instance, fit for immediate entrance into a per- 
fected heaven. 

For myself, I find no particular comfort in the 

253 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


doctrine of an intermediate state, yet, we admit 
that many people who leave this world too good to 
deserve a place in hell are not fitted, so far as we 
can judge, for an immediate entrance into such a 
place as we believe heaven to be. Sam Jones, in his 
evangelistic sermons, was accustomed to say that 
if all people who expected to go to heaven really 
got there, he would need to adopt precautions for 
the protection of his valuables. ‘There is no moral 
quality in the fact of death; no magic about it 
which can be expected suddenly to transform a 
crabbed or miserly or petulant Christian into an 
irreproachable angel. There are Christians who, 
for their own well-being and the comfort of their 
associates, will need a few millions of years of in- 
struction if they are to live comfortably with other 
people in heaven. 

I do not know who invented the notion that 
there can be no possible sin in heaven; that, as I 
once heard a man say, if St. Paul should commit in 
heaven one tiniest offense against the perfect will 
of God, he would be cast out and hurled into the 
bottomless pit. No one is wise enough to be justi- 
fied in any such nonsense. ‘There will be no sin in 

254 


le a a 


ee ae Eh mei 


MAY WE PRAY FOR OUR DEAD? 


heaven, in the sense of lawless hostility to God; but 
souls in heaven will have to learn, and there will 
always be the possibility of learning by the making 
of mistakes and trying again. 

Without committing ourselves to the clumsy and 
needless doctrine of an intermediate state, or the 
wholly useless machinery of a future probation, let 
us cherish the belief that heaven is capable of ad- 
justing itself to people of many degrees of sanc- 
tity and experience; that it is a place of perpetual 
growth in knowledge and in grace and in the fine 
art of living together. 

May we pray for our dead? 

In Great Britain and other countries where loss 
of life was heavy in the World War, this question 
is asked with new insistence. There has been 
strong opposition in Puritan theology to the prac- 
tise of prayer for the dead. It has seemed to sug- 
gest the idea of Purgatory, and has been opposed 
on the ground that those who are dead are either 
saved or lost, and our prayers can not avail for 
them. ‘There is a growing conviction that this does 
not answer the agonized question of sorrowing 
hearts, and I think it does not. 

255 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


Speaking for myself, I hold no theory of Purga- 
tory, yet I see no good reason why we should not 
pray for our dead. We do not need to pray to God 
to be merciful toward them, for He is more merci- 
ful than we are, and loves our dear ones more than 
we do. The fact that our loved ones are in heaven 
is not the last word of our hope for them: we hope 
that there they still will grow in love and strength 
and goodness, and I do not know any reason to 
think that our prayers may not be a help to them. 
I am sure that we are under no obligation to cease 
loving them, and why should we cease to pray for 
them? If it is any comfort so to do, I am certain 
no one has a right to forbid it. 

Death as we stand close to it seems a great and 
wide gulf between us and another world; it may 
not be nearly as wide as we think. You stand be- 
side a river and look across; it is very wide, deep 
and dark. But if you climb a mountain and look 
down, it is just a narrow silver ribbon, and the two 
sides of it are not very unlike. So, I think, may be 
the two shores of the river of death as we shall look 
down from another world. But I believe the other 
shore is more fertile, more beautiful; and the same 

256 


MAY WE PRAY FOR OUR DEAD? 


God reigns on both sides. I think your prayers can 
bridge that stream; at least, if it comforts you to 
think so, you have the right to think so, and to 
pray. 

Let me add this word of caution. If your heart 
impels you to pray for your dead, do not Iet your 
prayers degenerate into superstition in any form. 
It were better to leave our loved ones alone in the 
dignity of death than to let our childish fancy lead 
us into foolish and degraded forms of prayer for 
them. And do not pray any prayer which assumes 
either that your dead need your prayers to induce 
God to be kindly and generous and merciful to 
them, or that you need their prayers to God to in- 
duce Him to be merciful and gracious and just to 
you. If you will bear these cautions in mind, and 
you. find comfort in prayer for those whom you 
have “loved long since and lost a while,” no man 
has a right to forbid you. 


CHAPTER XV 
HEAVEN 


THe word Heaven is used in the Bible in three 
distinct yet closely related senses: 'The first is the 
atmospheric heaven, the place of clouds, the home 
of the birds, the region in plain sight and a little 


beyond our reach. “The fowls of the heaven” live 


there. ‘The second is the astronomical heaven, the 
region in which the sun and moon and planets 
move. The third is the theological heaven, the 
abode of God and of holy angels and of redeemed 
souls, 

It is not to be supposed, however, that this divi- 
sion is arbitrary or constant. When Paul spoke of 
being caught up into the third heaven, it is not nec- 
essary to imagine that he carefully defined the two 
lower ones; much less is precise numeration essen- 
tial when “the seventh heaven” is spoken of. The 
throne of God is exalted high above all visible 
objects. 


~08 


HEAVEN 


We need not be disturbed by questions of direc- 
tion or location. That heaven is conceived of as 
above need not interfere with our knowledge of the 
revolution of the earth. The elevation is spiritual, 
and not necessarily geographical. } 

Yet we are hardly justified in saying, “Heaven 
is a state and not a place.” It is, to be sure, a state; 
and it can hardly be called a place in the sense that 
we are to demand its location at some particular 
point in the stellar map; but it is somewhere. “I 
go to prepare a place for you.” Heaven is a pre- 
pared place for a prepared people. Where it is, 
and at what point in the earth’s revolution we 
should think of it as nearest when we say that it is 
above, we need not trouble to ask. We are con- 
strained in our thinking to locate it, and we think of 
it as above. That is all we need to say or to know 
of its location. 

The doctrine of a future life has been abused, as 
most good things have been abused, in its use as a 
divine bribe upon the one hand and menace upon 
the other. We may well pray: 


What conscience tells me should be done, 
Or warns me not to do, 


259 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


That teach me more than hell to shun, 
This more than heaven pursue. 


But we do not need to regard it as a selfish re- 
ward of virtue that the coldly calculating Christian 
shall barter joy in this world for greater joy here- 
after, or avoid the sin which in his heart he loved for 
fear of the hell he deserves. On this subject James 
Freeman Clark spoke sane and wise words: 


I know that it is the custom to say that belief in 
immortality is not necessary to human virtue or 
human happiness. ‘The highest and noblest virtue, 
it is declared, does not need the stimulus of future 
reward and punishment. If there is no hereafter, 
good men will continue to be good for the sake of 
goodness. And, if there is no hereafter, men will 
continue to enjoy this life because of its own in- 
terest. The earthly paradise is enough for us, it is 
said: we need no future paradise. 

This is partially true. Goodness may not need 
future reward and punishment as a motive. But 
the influence on life which immortality furnishes 
does not act mainly as the expectation of reward. 
We are made better, stronger, nobler, by our faith 
in immortality, because we have around us the 
mighty influence of the great cloud of witnesses 
who have gone up. We belong to their world as 
well as to our own. Is it nothing to know that the 
spiritual universe above us is not empty, but full of 

260 


% 





HEAVEN 


immortal souls, advancing on forever, in sympathy 
with all that is good here? Is it nothing to believe 
that the saints and martyrs of all time, the prophets 
and heroes of every age, are still full of the same 
powers, still devoted to the same generous activ- 
ities? Will our lives be the same whether we be- 
heve that all the regions of being above man are 
full of intelligence, energy, and love, or that they 
are a vast emptiness, an infinite and inane void? 

It is sometimes said that it is sheer egotism for 
any man to assume that he is so important to the 
universe that God must raise him from the dead 
and grant him life everlasting. It is said that we 
need not demand for our own selves or our loved 
ones identity of being in the life to come. It is 
affirmed that, having served his purpose with us 
here, God can better dispose of us when we die and 
begin again new life with new beings. But this 
does not satisfy the demands of affection, nor yet 
those of the higher reason. We are by no means 
sure that newly created beings without our experi- 
ence and personality could serve God as well as 
men can serve. 

There is no Scripture basis for the belief that 
angels were once human beings. ‘They may have 
been, but if so the fact is not stated. If they be- 

261 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


long to a different order, to a class that has never 
known struggle such as we have had, heaven must 
possess for them a pathetic lack of background. 
William Hervey Woods with keen penetration has 
set forth this truth—in a poem entitled Angels 
and Men: 


He said, “We have no kin— 

No angel of us sees with fond surprise 

Himself smile at him from his daughter’s eyes, 
And though new worlds we win, 

Lonely and chill is our white angel-hood 

Beside the warm, quick, quivering woof of blood 
All men are knitted in; 

Envy us not our palace-pomp enskied, 

We have but heaven, and ye have home beside.” 


He said, ““We have no tears— 
But when mid our antiphonies, we mark 
Jehovah stoop, because down in your dark 

Some sobbing prayer he hears, 
And with His own hand lift the weeper’s head, 
‘To us who watch, so to be comforted 

Outbids all griefs and fears, 
And Michael even would snatch at man’s distress 
Might he but know man-wise God’s gentleness.” 


He said, “We have no scars, 
No knotted wounds Immanuel’s touch may kiss 
To sudden-thrilling, keen, deep-seated bliss, 
But wistful mid the stars 


262 





HEAVEN 


We stand, and hear Him speak rapt, shaken words 
With His old comrades of the time of swords. 
O men, it is your wars 
With Him and for Him, make the Christ your 
own— 
You and your Jesus here have sears alone!” 


The Bible descriptions of heaven have been vul- 
garized by too much literalism. Any description of 
happy existence and relationship of spiritual beings 
would of necessity employ figures of speech de- 
rived from pleasant objects in this life. It is not 
of heaven but of a regenerate society here on earth 
that the Book of Revelation speaks when it tells of 
golden streets and gates of pearls and harps and 
crowns. It is quite legitimate to use these figures 
also of heaven, provided we remember that we are 
not dealing with prose, and are speaking the lan- 
guage of illustration and not of definition. So 
soon as we make the Book of Revelation a kind of 
Baedeker of heaven, we become bound to a crass 
materialism, none the less pathetic because it is 
used in the service of religion. 

Healthy boys and girls in this generation are not 
singing, “I want to be an angel,” and healthy older 
people do not contemplate with strong and consist- 

263 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


ent desire the picture of a heaven of eternal leth- 
argy, broken only by choir rehearsals. 

Broadly speaking, we are justified in thinking 
that heaven will preserve all the essential values of 
human life, and protect them upon the field of a 
larger and nobler existence. Whatever helps the 
imagination to visualize this, will, if not morbidly 
dwelt upon, assist to make heaven a trifle more 
tangible. 

Whatever is best in this life will be with us in 
heaven, or if not that, then something adapted to 
meet the same need, but better. 

The saddest funerals are not those where the 
most tears are shed; the saddest are those where 
every one is secretly glad, and where there is only 
a hollow pretense of grief to satisfy the demands of 
public decency. Grief is the thorny stem on which 
bloom the fairest flowers of love. We could not 
suffer if we did not love. 

It is not certainty but faith that upholds us in 
time of sorrow. ‘There can be no complete dem- 
onstration of any of the finer things of life. Jon- 
athan Brierley was no writer of cant, nor did he 
write much of heaven. His was a faith for the day’s 

264 


HEAVEN 


work; but when he came to face death he did so 


with the calm confidence that he knew whom he 
had believed: 


Death remains for us all a great venture. ““Who 
knows,” says Euripides, “if life be death and death 
life?’ On that “Who knows,” the great “Per- 
haps,” countless multitudes of our fellow men have 
been content to live and die. To us, with all the 
light that comes from both science and religion, the 
step from “here” to “there” we have all to take re- 
mains still a step into the unknown. ‘The mystery 
of living is kept up to its last moment. We are to 
be on tiptoe all the time. The soul is not allowed to 
support itself on any other material than faith. 
And that it is so is surely well; fcr us it is best so. 
Were certainty and clear vision better we should 
have had it. But we are to trust the whole way and 
go by trusting. We have been led too well and too 
graciously to permit of our believing that we shall 
be fooled at the last. 


Faith in immortality is the highest tribute which 
the mind of man has paid to the value of life. 
When that faith is unselfish, intelligent and truly 
religious, it is the highest and noblest form of ex- 
pression of confidence in the fundamental sound- 
ness of the universe and the eternal goodness of 
God. 

265 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


We shall not be satisfied to be told that our own 
loved ones are forever gone from us, but that God 
will give us other and compensating joys, for we 
want the assurance that the love of this life is not 
wasted. It is too precious a thing to lose with life. 
If it were thus to be lost, God would mercifully 
save us the bitterness of our grief. Grief is per- 
mitted, that comfort may be abundant. 


God does not send us strange flowers every year; 
When the spring winds blow o’er the pleasant 
places, 
The same dear things lift up the same fair faces, 
The violet is here. 


Tt all comes back, the odor, grace, and hue, 

Hach sweet relation of its life repeated; 

Nothing is lost, no looking-for is cheated; 
It is the thing we knew. 


So after the death winter it will be; 

God will not put strange sights in heavenly places; 

The old love will look out from the old faces; 
Loved one, I shall have thee. 


The largest building Jesus ever saw on earth was 
the Temple at Jerusalem. It was a house of many 
rooms. When He journeyed thither with his par- 

266 


HEAVEN 


ents at the age of twelve, He asked, “Wist ye not 
that I must be in my Father’s house?” 'The same 
idea which He used of the Temple on that occasion 
is expressed in the word which He used of heaven 
in his last discourse with his disciples, though in 
Luke 2:49 the noun does not appear. As the tem- 
ple in Jerusalem was a house of many rooms de- 
voted to a wide variety of purposes, but all 
constructed with reference to the promotion of a 
common end, so also was His Father’s house in 
heaven: the eternal abode of the blessed. 
Interesting as is his use of the word “house,” the 
word “mansions” is even more so. It suggests a 
degree of privacy, an element of personal and so- 
cial relationship belonging to heaven and absent, or 
at least not emphasized, in the popular conception 
of what that place may contain. When we get to 
heaven we are not going to camp out-of-doors in 
the golden streets, surrounded by a mob of angels. 
Heaven has its sacred privacies; its companion- 
ships free from the rude intrusion of celestial gos-_ 
sip. I should not like to translate it, “My Father’s 
house is a great big apartment building,” but that 
would be nearer the truth than to make it read, 
267 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


“My Father’s house is a place where people do 
nothing but attend public functions of a religious 
nature.” 

It is interesting, too, that our Lord said, “I go 
to prepare.” That kind of preparation was usually 
delegated to a servant. Peter and John had done 
that with respect to the very room where Jesus 
engaged in this conversation. ‘They had gone to 
Jerusalem early in the afternoon to prepare the 
guest chamber for Jesus and his disciples who came 
in the evening. He told them that He was going 
to heaven to do there what two of his disciples had 
done for Him that very day. They had gone 
ahead to prepare a place for Him. They had come 
to Jesus asking, “Where wilt thou that we prepare 
for Thee to eat the Passover?” (Matthew 26:17.) 
He told them where to go and they had gone and 
prepared this very room. Now, He, using the 
very same word which they had used to Him, said, 
“I go and prepare a place for you.” It is an inter- 
esting bit of reciprocity, but we must not dwell 
upon it, for our chief thought centers round another 
word, the word here translated “mansions.” 

The most interesting word in this verse and the 

2638 


HEAVEN 


one which is the key to its real meaning is “man- 
sions.” It is a word which occurs in the New Tes- 
tament as a noun only here and in a later verse in 
this same chapter, where Jesus says that He and 
the Father will enter into the lives of those who love 
Him, “and make our abode with him.” (John 
14:23.) But as a verb we have the word in a large 
number of passages; and we find it both as noun 
and verb in other Greek literature. By this process 
of comparison we discover that the word has no 
such settled and permanent connotation as the 
word “mansions.” It is used of lodging places as 
where Jesus lodged with Zaccheus (Luke 19:5) ; 
and was asked to abide with the disciples (Luke 
24:29). The same verb is used of Peter’s lodging 
with Simon, the tanner (Acts 9:43); of Paul’s 
boarding place with Aquilla and Priscilla (Acts 
18:3), and of his visiting at Cesarea “a good many 
days” (Acts 21; 7-8, 10). 

It is interesting to discover in a reference like this 
an incidental but still fairly clear indication of one 
of the conditions of habit. So far as this verse gives 
us any light at all, its suggestion is that of progress. 
When we get to heaven we shall not settle down in 
everlasting stagnation; we shall move on. 

269 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


We shall move on in knowledge. These minds 
of ours are not constructed for a sudden and explo- 
sive expansion, either on earth or in heaven. ‘The 
soul itself is not a physical entity; it is our capacity 
for development. We struggle through this world 
with painfully little knowledge, but normal life 
never loses its capacity for growth and its eager- 
ness to grow. We may reasonably assume that 
heaven will be a place of progress in the exact sci- 
ences, such as one quaint philosopher had in mind 
when being asked of the occupation of God through 
eternity, answered, “God geometrizes.”’ 

And yet it will be a minor interest of heaven that 
we shall discover in abstract pursuit; we shall grow 
in knowledge in heaven and that normally, as Jesus 
on earth grew in wisdom while He grew in stature. 
“Now we know in part; then shall we know even as 
also we are known.” 

We shall move on in our capacity for mutual 
helpfulness. Our whole mind and condition are 
constructed with reference to social relationship. 
We might as well expect to walk through heaven 
on one leg as to suppose that we shall go through 
with unsocial personality. 

270 


HEAVEN 


We shall grow in goodness. People sometimes 
assume that the instant we get to heaven every 
fault we have will be miraculously eradicated. I do 
not believe anybody knows that to be true. It 
seems to be the plan of God that we shall be per- 
mitted to make a good many blunders here on earth 
that we may learn by our mistakes. I know no rea- 
son why we should suppose that God will instantly 
and violently abrogate that method. I have heard 
people say that if the highest archangel in glory 
should commit one slightest sin that single viola- 
tion of God’s law would cast him instantly down 
to hell. Nobody knows that and I do not believe 
it. I think that God who is so patient with us here 
can afford to be and will be patient with us while 
we slowly but surely learn better. 

I have already spoken of the fact that the only 
other place in the New Testament where the word 
“mansions” is used as a noun is in this same chap- 
ter, where Jesus says that He and the Father will 
make their abode with those who love God. That 
is a very precious promise, whose beginnings are 
available now and whose reach extends to the 
farther side of eternity. In heaven we shall be 

271 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


moving on, but we shall always have companion- 
ship. The golden streets have other traffic than 
the celestial moving vans. We move on, but our 
Heavenly Father and our gracious Saviour move 
on with us. 

It is a satisfaction thus to be assured that in the 
next world, as in this, “Our God goes marching 
on.” Progress does not halt, either on God’s part 
or ours. This urge in the blood of normal human 
life is not wholly a manifestation of our human 
restlessness; it is a manifestation of something in 
the heart of God that from the days of Israel’s 
wanderings in the wilderness on through the tri- 
umphal progress of heaven keeps God and us for- 
ever moving. ‘The homing instinct of the soul that 
drives us Godward is no more a normal part of our 
nature than the adventurous push within us, spur- 
ring us ever on to catch the rhythm of the Divine 
music and keep step with God. 

A good many years ago IJ had a visit by the road- 
side with an unlettered preacher in the Kentucky 
mountains. It was a hot day. We stopped to 
water our horses where we crossed a stream and 
then dismounted and sat for a little while upon the 

272 


HEAVEN 


bank. He first tried to interest me in a horse trade 
and then proceeded to tell me of an illness which 
he had experienced seven years before, which pro- 
duced a remarkable change in him. It was typhoid 
fever and for several weeks he was in delirium. He 
told me that as a result of that sickness he found 
himself for the first time in his life able to read the 
Bible. He had attended school but a few weeks 
in his childhood and Jearned a small number of 
words out of Webster’s blue-backed spelling book 
according’ to the method of instruction then in 
vogue in the mountain schools, but he never had put 
words together until after his sickness, when to his 
delight he found himself able to read the Bible. He 
did not pretend to have become very efficient at it, 
but by spelling out some words and skipping the 
hardest ones, he had the indescribable joy of being 
able to read his Bible. I do not doubt but that what 
he told me was true, and his case is not without 
parallel in the records of psychology. 

But he also told me that he died. He was con- 
scious all the time while his friends gathered about 
him and prepared his body for burial. He heard 
what they said and knew what they were doing and 

273 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


could see his body and knew that it was no longer 
his, and it was a sorrow to him when finally he had 
to reinhabit it and make those involuntary mani- 
festations of life which caused his friends to desist 
from their preparations for his burial. The doctor 
called it by some name he did not know and in- 
sisted that he never really had been dead, but he 
knew better. Now people said he was crazy when 
he told about it, but he knew that he was perfectly 
sane and describing his actual experience. 

He went to heaven, so he said, and to his great 
surprise was not immediately ushered into the pres- 
ence of all its joys; indeed he never got very far in. 
He was just in the first room, which was more 
beautiful than any he had ever seen. It was ceiled 
with plain lumber and painted a dove color and 
around him were beauties indescribable, but on the 
farther side was an unglazed window at a height 
where those in the first room could see through, and 
the next room was as much more beautiful than the 
first as the first room was than anything he had 
ever seen on earth. But even this was not the end, 
for he could see a similar window in the farther 
partition of the second room and had a suggestion 
of others in the rooms that were still beyond. 

AT & 


HEAVEN 


? 


He said “They call me crazy and say the fever 
turned my head, but I know what I seen and it’s so. 
You stay in the first room a thousand years and 
think it’s only a day, for a thousand years are a day 
with the Lord, and it takes you that long to see all 
there is to see and learn all there is to learn in that 
first room. And it takes you longer in the next 
room, for it’s more beautiful than the first and you 
never can get tired of it for you are always learn- 
ing something you didn’t know and seeing some- 
thing more beautiful than you ever dreamed. And 
so you go on and on, room after room, and room 
after room, always learning, always finding out 
something, always increasing in your power to en- 
joy more beautiful things and you never get to the 
last one, for it’s worlds without end. Amen.” 
[traveled in Palestine last year, and I was there 
also before the day of automobiles. I am always 
moved when I remember how our camp was struck 
each morning and ready for us in a distant place at 
night. Hach morning at five o’clock the servants 
in the camp blew on instruments of discord, and 
pounded on pans and pots and basins and marched 
around the Jericho of our habitations, and the can- 

275 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


vas walls of our abode fell down in just thirty 
minutes after the first blast of the horn and bang 
of the pan. If any of us had lingered in bed, and 
was not dressed, it did him no good to shout in pro- 
test, for the morning toilet had to be finished in the 
open. By the time we were seated for our break- 
fast in the dining tent, we beheld our tents, beds 
and baggage all loaded on mules and camels, mov- 
ing away we knew not where. Neither did we see 
it as we rode, for often it went another way. 

We did not see our camp at noon, for we lunched 
in the shade of trees if there were trees, or of walls 
where there were no trees, and sometimes we found 
the peaceful “shadow of a great rock in a weary 
land.” 

But late in the afternoon as the sun was setting, 
we rounded a turn in the road, or came to the top 
of a hill, and there we saw our tents. And inside 
of every several tent were the beds and basins and 
the baggage all set and in waiting. It was a wel- 
come sight. Never did we behold it without a thrill. 

We live in a changing world, and here we have 
no continuing city, but endeavor each day that we 
may nightly pitch our moving tent a day’s march 

276 


HEAVEN 


nearer home. Year by year we have seen much 
that we cared for that has moved on and left us 
puzzled and bewildered, and sometimes in tears. 

But we know what another traveler meant whose 
name was once Saul, who is also called Paul, when 
he said in effect, We know that if our earthly house 
of this tent wherein we have our mortal life were 
stricken down and collapsed so that it seemed dis- 
solved in nothingness, we have awaiting and pre- 
pared for us a building of God, a house not made 
by hands, in the place toward which we journey. 
Wherefore, we witness the moving forward of the 
things we love not without some sorrow and con- 
cern, but without utter dismay. For some time, 
when the day is near its ending, we shall pass 
through a valley that is shadowed but we shall go 
without fear. And this hope is for all who have 
like precious faith. 

“Wherefore, comfort one another with these 
words.” 

I do not think we are in any danger of thinking 
of Heaven in terms too beautiful. All our thought 
must be in figures derived from this life, and is 
probably very inadequate. But the truth is not 

277 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


less than our faith. We are at liberty to believe the 
very best that we can think, for if God is our 
Father, and has planned this great gift for his 
children, then there is nothing too good to be true. 

I was riding on a train from New York to Chi- 
cago. In the Pullman with me, among other pas- 
sengers, rode a mother and a little girl of five. The 
little girl and I got acquainted. She had a set of 
dominoes, and we played a game of her own inven- 
tion. We made beds. A domino stood on end 
made a headboard, and two dominoes laid flat made 
the mattress. We made single beds and double 
beds and twin beds. We tried to make beds such 
as the porter made up in the car, but we did not suc- 
ceed so well. | 

She and her mother were on their way to South 
Bend. The little girl’s father had gone on to take 
up anew position under the same firm for whom he 
previously worked in New York. 

When we reached Elkhart, I said to the little 
girl, “This is Elkhart. It is one hundred and one 
miles from Chicago. ‘This is our last long stop. 
Here we cut off the dining-car, and here, perhaps, 
we shall change engines. We run to Chicago in 

278 


HEAVEN 


two hours and twenty minutes, and South Bend 
comes before Chicago.” 

She said, “I don’t care if this old train never gets 
to South Bend.” 

I inquired of her why she held South Bend in 
such low esteem, and she told me that it was because 
in South Bend she would be required to learn “very 
hard letters.” 

With a little investigation I learned these further 
facts: She had just started to go to school in New 
York in the middle of September, and had attended 
not more than three weeks when her mother re- 
ceived word that her father’s position in South 
Bend was assured, and the removal followed. The 
little girl had heard her mother say that she was 
sorry to leave just then, as the little girl had just 
got nicely started in school, and now would have to 
begin all over again. The little girl understood this 
to mean that she would encounter in South Bend 
an entirely new alphabet, and she dreaded the 
“very hard letters.” 

Now, if any of you ever learned the English al- 
phabet, you will not blame that little girl. If you 
have forgotten how hard it really is to commit to 

279 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


memory the forms and names and phonetic value of 
twenty-six arbitrary symbols, just learn another 
alphabet as a wholesome exercise—the Greek, or if 
you know that, the Hebrew. You may find the 
Greek moderately easy, for the letters are very sim- 
ilar to ours, but you will be thankful that the He- 
brew alphabet has only twenty-two letters. This 
little girls had learned twenty-six letters, and a 
good many short words in three weeks, and when 
she thought of the necessity of learning another 
alphabet, she did not care whether the old train 
ever reached South Bend, for she dreaded the “very 
hard letters.” Her memories of the difficulty of 
learning the alphabet were recent and vivid, and 
she had reason to dread the learning of other and 
possibly more difficult ones. 

I told the little girl that I had journeyed through 
South Bend a hundred times, and that I had re- 
liable information that she would not need to learn 
any new alphabet. I told her that the same twen- 
ty-six letters were employed there, and that the 
spelling was identical with that used in New York. 
I told her that very few people in South Bend 
spelled c-o-w with a “k”; that it was not considered 

280 


HEAVEN 
good form; and that d-o-g and c-a-t were spelled 
exactly as they were in New York. 

I succeeded in convincing her, and the informa- 
tion comforted her. She grew more interested in 
the approach of the end of the journey, and I think 
she appreciated my great knowledge of the state of 
education in South Bend. 

It is in some such way I like to think of the rela- 
tions of this life to that which is to come. Our ed- 
ucation here is just begun, and we find ourselves 
caught up out of this kindergarten of the soul and 
taken to where it seems everything will be strange 
and we shall have to begin all over again. I wonder 
if our Heavenly Father has not some experienced 
angels who have nothing better to do than to meet 
us somewhere near the terminal, and tell us better. 

Kind deeds, and loving words, and helpful acts, 
and noble aspirations, and worthy resolves, and 
heroic faith, and struggles to overcome temptation, 
and desires to serve others, are the alphabet, the 
primary forms, out of which, I am confident, all the 
words in the unabridged dictionary of the language 
of heaven are to be spelled. I do not think that 
heaven is very far away, or that our friends who 

281 


MY FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 


have gone before us are remote, or that our life 
here is of no concern to them, or theirs to us. I be- 
lieve that there is a community of interest; that we 
are to use the standards of that life as the measure 
of this when we pray, “Thy kingdom come, as in 
Heaven, so on earth,” and that we are to use the 
experiences of this life as having permanent signif- 
icance in their relation to the life of the Kingdom 
of God. 

This is my own faith, the faith which helps me, 
and the faith which in the hour of sorrow I bring 
for the comfort of those who mourn. It is a faith 
that has its deep springs in the noblest and _ best 
aspirations of human life, and its assurance of 
validity in the promises of the Word of God. It 
has the attestation of the Lord Jesus, who as He 
entered the tomb and made it radiant with the hope 
of immortality, said to his disciples, “If it were not 
so, I would have told you.” 

The train stopped at South Bend, and the little 
girl waved me a farewell. 

When I last saw her she was in the arms of her 
father. 


THE END 





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